There's a New Ghost in Town
by Windsurf
Summary: The beginning of Danny Phantom - but with a different situation than the actual show.
1. The Fentons

**Chapter 1: The Fentons**

"Hey Jazz!" Danny Fenton greeted his sister. "Where's Mom and Dad?"

"I'll give you one guess," Jazz Fenton replied through gritted teeth, not even looking up from her book Surviving Teenage Adolescence with Psychology.

Danny sighed. He did know. Their parents were always in the lab, working franticly on some stupidly-named ghost weapon.

Sometimes he wondered if they had gotten exposed to too much ectoplasm, the material ghosts were made of; the adult Fentons could be as obsessive as the beings they hunted.

Not that Danny believed in ghosts. He had outgrown that years ago. When he was younger, he had played GHOST! a lot, getting into mock fights with his dad or an imaginary foe. But, as Jazz said, no one, not even their parents, had seen a ghost before, and when invention after invention failed, doubts had set in and he had cast his childhood images aside. They could only hope their parents would eventually do the same, though Danny doubted their dad would ever grow up; he still slept with a teddy bear. The hope was very small.

At least Jazz had sense, even if she was too mature for her own good. She was such a bookworm, always reading some book on psychology or the mind. Part of her interest in psychology came from her attempt to understand their parents' weird trains of thought. She had grown to be very perceptive, constantly analyzing her family's actions and determining their moods, including Danny's. Despite this annoyance (Danny did not need Jazz to explain his emotions to himself or increase his motivation to do well in school, thank you very much, he was fine!), he did appreciate her sisterly care for him. He would never tell her, but he reciprocated the feeling, watching out for her as best he could. Like when they had gone trick-or-treating one Halloween and had visited a house with a very unfriendly dog.

A _very_ unfriendly dog.

Danny had barely been able to shove Jazz out of the way and was too slow to avoid being bitten himself. Boy, that bite had hurt! Note to self: never go near that dog again. But anyway, Jazz hadn't gotten hurt and that was all that mattered. He hadn't regretted his choice when he had been in the hospital, and he sure didn't regret it now.

Danny jerked and frowned in annoyance when he heard an explosion from the basement lab.

"Jazz! Danny!" the excited voice of Jack Fenton called.

Jazz snapped her book shut. "I wouldn't go down there if I was you," she informed him as she stomped past.

"Jazz? Danny?"

"Library!" Jazz shouted in response and left before anyone could respond.

Danny sighed. He really did not want to go down to the lab and listen to his father blabber on about his new invention, the Fenton something-or-other. He wanted to go hang out with Sam and Tucker, maybe play a few video games or watch a movie. Sheesh, he'd even do his homework before going down _there_.

"Danny?" Jack came up the steps.

"I…have homework to do," Danny said.

"But it's Saturday!" Jack exclaimed.

"Yeah…but," Danny desperately looked for another excuse. "I don't want to fall behind! You know, freshman year at high school, I have to stay…on…top of things!" Wow, it sounded pathetic even to him.

But apparently, it didn't to his father because his father's face took on a lost, downtrodden puppy look that instantly made Danny feel guilty. He hated making his parents sad.

"Well," Danny stalled. "I guess I do have a few minutes." Mentally, he smacked himself in the face. He was going to regret this.

In fact, he couldn't even begin to understand just how much.

Jack's face brightened like a lightbulb and he rushed to the basement, talking about "the greatest invention they had ever made" with Danny far behind.

When Danny reached the lab, his mother and father appeared to be fusing something. When they were done, they smiled excitedly at each other and showed the thumbs-up sign.

"Um, what's with the huge hole?" Danny asked. Because the very first thing he noticed was that his parents were working inside a sizable hole in the basement's wall.

His father jumped out and enthusiastically began explaining the invention, using a chalkboard to show the calculations. Maddie Fenton, his mother, just stood by him, smiling proudly.

"It's the Fenton Ghost Portal, son! You are looking at the machine that will create a stable portal between the Ghost Zone and our world!" Danny stared at the drawing in confusion, one eyebrow raised and his mouth hanging open slightly.

Danny looked to his mom, the saner of his two parents. While still obsessed with ghosts, she had always been there for him and Jazz and cared for them. She could explain the invention.

"It will allow us to go to the Ghost Zone, the ghosts' home. We'll be able to study them like never before and learn things we never dreamed of!" his mom clarified.

Danny stared at it. It was full of wires and metal panels. "O-kay?"

"We haven't turned it on yet," Jack said. "This is just so momentous! Took us years to design and make this! We almost gave up on the portal in college because of an accident, but no little accident will stop Jack Fenton!" He shook his fist with the declaration.

Maddie smiled proudly at him again while Danny rolled his eyes discreetly. Sure, his dad was stubborn, but his mom was far more determined and capable. Jack never gave up because he was too childish to let go; thus, he continually tried again using the guess and check method. Maddie never gave up because she was determined to get things right; thus, she continually tried again by reworking the calculations and looking for mistakes to fix. These mistakes never crushed her.

"Ready everyone?" Jack almost yelled. Danny backed up, away from the invention, as his dad picked up the cord coming from inside the portal and an extension cord connected to the wall. Maddie walked up to stand beside him in front of the portal and anticipation filled the lab.

Danny stopped backing up when he deemed himself far enough away that he wouldn't be hurt if the portal exploded, which was more than likely.

But nobody had anticipated what actually happened.

Jack connected the cords with a quick movement, grinning at the Fenton Ghost Portal in front of him.

The Fenton Ghost Portal came to life.

_It's working!_ Danny though wildly. _It's actually –_

The thought abruptly halted when some sparks jumped around inside the portal and went out. The room was silent. Everyone was motionless.

The Fenton Ghost Portal didn't work.


	2. Screams

**Thanks to all reviewers! Just to let you know, advice is welcome. Also, how long do you want the chapters to be? I originally thought a little over a thousand words for each chapter would be good, but if you want them to be longer, by all means, I'll write more, just tell me how long you want them.**

**Chapter 2: Screams**

The looks on the adult Fentons' faces when they turned around to go upstairs were hopeless. Here lay the project they had been working on for decades, since college. The aim of all their work. The window that could have taken their knowledge to a whole other level.

And it didn't work. They'd never be able to go beyond theories and conjectures.

Jack was about ready to cry. His wife's promise of a cookie, something that always cheered him up, was completely ineffective.

Danny was startled to see that his mom's face was a reflection of his father's (excluding the pout). The determination he usually saw was absent, replaced by depressed resignation. He shifted uncomfortably as they trudged by, heads down.

"Come on upstairs, Danny," his mom said sadly.

"Actually, I might just stay down here a little longer," Danny said, nervously rubbing the back of his neck.

"Well, okay." She didn't have the spirit to inquire further. "We're going to go to the grocery store and run some errands. We'll be back by dinner. Don't forget to do your homework," she added automatically.

At any other time, Danny would have rolled his eyes.

Instead, he watched his parents go upstairs silently and then turned to face the Fenton Ghost Portal.

The cause of their sadness just sat there.

Maybe he could find out what was wrong with it. It could be as simple as an unplugged wire. _On the inside_, he mentally added as he observed the external wires. _I could just go in, look around, and see if anything was wrong_.

Yeah. If he had a death wish. And how would he know if anything was wrong?

But it's not working, he argued back. It's not doing anything. He had to at least try instead of just standing by and watching.

A few minutes later, Danny was pulling on a white hazmat suit with black boots, gloves, and trim along with a black belt. It was rather old-fashioned and bland without any colors, but it was the only one that fit and it wasn't like he'd be wearing it again, Danny reasoned. He did persist, however, in tearing his dad's face off of it. He didn't care if his dad saw, he wouldn't be caught dead with it on.

The portal was full of wires and paneling that he could sort of make out. In fact, it was kind of cool. He could easily pretend he was floating in space. Captain Danny to the -!

Danny shook his head. He was getting as crazy as his parents. It wasn't like he was eight anymore.

Turning around, he headed back towards the door to inspect more closely, but after two steps, he tripped and stumbled into the wall. Danny's breath hitched as he tried to brace himself on it and his left hand pushed a button.

A green glow came from the other side of the portal, illuminating the inside to reveal the green button Danny had just accidentally hit and the closed portal doors. The light was getting brighter, becoming a blazing white. The temperature dropped as the source of the light approached and while Danny shivered uncontrollably and hyperventilated, he could only think of one thing:

Who puts the 'on' button inside their invention?

The light source had finally arrived, making the wires spark as it passed them, leaving a swirling green void. Everything it touched fizzed and when it reached Danny, he shuddered away from the sense of emptiness emanating from it. But he only had a few milliseconds to register the feeling because the moment it touched him, he fizzed, too.

It was a feeling he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy, even Dash Baxter. His senses went into overload as the white light enveloped him. His eyes burned, his ears rang, his nose throbbed, and his throat felt enflamed and raw. Subconsciously, he knew he was screaming, but no sound came out of his mouth.

The worst part was the feeling. It seemed like lots of little, unseen particles were trying to go through him, but couldn't. Each time one got stuck in him, he felt a sharp electric shock that wouldn't have been so bad if it was alone. No, instead he was feeling billions of these shocks, all at the same time, wave after wave. The pain from the waves was excruciating, and after being battered for what seemed like hours, Danny fell unconscious.

The first thing Danny saw when he woke up was a grey ceiling with shorted-out wires. Odd, that wasn't what his ceiling looked like.

Danny's eyes snapped open as he remembered the past few – what, minutes? Hours? Seconds? He jumped up and raced out of the portal at a speed he hadn't realized he was capable of, then turned around and surveyed the lab. Nothing seemed wrong or different about it, except maybe the fact that it looked a bit greener than he remembered. Danny quickly wrote this oddity off as an effect of the accident. The question of whether the lab had been affected or himself he ignored. Other than feeling a bit cold, he seemed okay, so shockingly enough, he had to be fine.

_What now?_ Danny wondered. He supposed he should tell his family. Ugh. Just the thought of their reactions made him shudder. Maybe he shouldn't tell them; after all, nothing showed that the accident had ever happened. But no, he wouldn't lie to them. They should know about this.

However, they weren't there right then. So. What was he going to do right now?

The answer popped into his head. 'Don't forget to do your homework.' He didn't have a huge amount. Maybe if he got it all done before they came back, he wouldn't be in as deep with his parents.

And maybe pigs would fly. He cringed. He was so going to get it.

Danny walked up the stairs to his room with a tired sigh. It was worth a shot, and the homework had to get done anyway.

It wasn't until he was already pulling out his books that Danny realized he was still wearing the hazmat suit. Ew. He frowned as he absent-mindedly shut one of his desk drawers. He could have sworn it had been black on white instead of white on black. Huh. With a shrug, he made to get up only to be blocked by the drawer protruding out of the desk. Hadn't he just shut it?

_Okay. Maybe that shock messed with me more than I thought_, he mused, becoming slightly concerned. Frowning again, he consciously reached out and shut the drawer. With jumbled thoughts, Danny walked back to his door with the intent of returning the suit to the lab when he glanced at the mirror.

Danny froze.

Who was that?

The being – boy? – in the mirror froze, too, looking scared and shocked. He was in the exact same position as Danny, and when Danny moved to put distance between them, the boy moved in the exact same way, too.

Danny's thoughts roared.

_What happened to me? How am I going to explain this? __**What am I going to do?**_

He rushed up to the mirror and grasped some of the snow white hair that hung messily over the boy's – his – face. After blinking in disbelief, he saw that his eyes were green and glowing. Glowing! The rest of him was glowing too! Danny began to freak out again. _I can't explain this! I don't even know what 'this' is! How would I tell my parents, _Yeah, going against all the rules you taught me about the lab, I started exploring the Fenton Ghost Portal, but then I tripped and hit the 'on' button, which you so intelligently put inside, and got badly electrocuted and came out looking like a **ghost**!

A_ ghost? No, that can't be right._ But that had been the first comparison that came to mind. Okay, calm down Fenton, he told himself as he stared at his reflection. Ghosts are dead. You're not. You are alive.

_Am I?_ he couldn't help but wonder. _I shouldn't be alive, not after that shock._

But I'm breathing, he argued.

_Big deal. I'm glowing, just like a ghost._

I'm moving.

_And your point is? Do ghosts act like statues?_

I'm warm. Sort of.

_No, I'm cold. It just doesn't bother me. I feel … empty. Like something's missing._

My heart is beating.

_Is it?_

Danny put his hand over his heart and closed his disturbing eyes. _Beat_, he begged silently. _Come on …_

A flood of warmth engulfed him as he felt a thump – his heart. A bright flash of light blazed through his closed eyes, and when he opened them, he saw a black-haired, blue-eyed boy with his hand over his heart in the mirror.

Danny Fenton taking the Pledge of Allegiance, folks.

Danny squinted at the image, still incredibly unnerved. He had no idea of what to do. Had he hallucinated? Was this a weird side effect from the portal? There was no way he was going to tell his parents about the accident now. If he said he'd looked like a ghost …

Except. Ghosts did not exist.

Fears allayed, Danny decided to do something normal.

Like the math homework sitting on his desk.


	3. Realization

**So it sounds like people generally like about 1,500 to 2,000 words. I'll do my best!**

**Also, don't be expecting daily updates. I'm aiming for every other day, but school might make it stretch a little longer. The absolute maximum time it will take me per chapter is a week, but I doubt it'll take that long.**

**Disclaimer: No, I do not own Danny Phantom. At all.**

**Chapter 3: Realization**

Danny glared at the math question. y = x2 + 4x – 12. Solve for x by factoring. He began writing out his work. Factors of 12: 1 and 12, 3 and 4, 2 and 6. So what pair would give him four?

His pencil fell with a clatter when he tried to twirl it.

With an irritated sigh, he picked it back up and returned to the problem. 12 – 1 = 11, 1 – 12 = -11, 3 – 4 = -1.

His pencil fell again. _Funny, I didn't let go of it._

4 – 3 = 1, 2 – 6 = -4. And 6 – 2 = 4. Of course it's the very last possibility.

"Gah!" he shouted when his supporting arm suddenly fell through the desk. He stared at it. Yep. Through the desk. Everything below his elbow was buried under its surface and Danny sharply pulled it back up.

His forearm had taken on a bluish, opaque look. He could see his paper through it! Slowly, it became solid and normal again.

_I am going to ignore that_, he thought. _Question number 2 of the impossibly hard math homework._ Boy did he hate math! It always got him frustrated and worked-up and -

This time he let out a shrill scream when he felt both his arms fall through the desk as though it wasn't there, making his upper body crash into the tabletop in a very uncomfortable position. Ouch. That was going to leave a bruise. Meaning he wouldn't be able to ignore his sudden phasing out of the tangible world. He gazed at his arms as they faded back to normal the way his left forearm had done a few minutes ago.

Danny tried not to freak out, but turning intangible was just not normal in his book. His breathing accelerated like a frightened rabbit's. _Calm down. Calm down. Be logical. Try to think why – oh, duh! The portal! The portal must have done more than just barbequed me! But what?_

CRASH! Danny jumped, his heart rate going even higher. _That sounded like it came from the basement. What is going on down there?_

He briskly got up, only to freeze again for the second time that day when he caught sight of himself in his mirror.

Or rather, his lack of self. His entire lower half was gone. Gingerly, Danny reached out to touch his leg and his hand met an invisible wall.

BANG!

_Okay, Fenton_, he ordered himself firmly. _Worry about invisible legs and intangible arms later. Worry about break-ins now._ He rushed downstairs.

Picture this:

A dark room without any windows. Weapons scattered along the walls and hard, metal tables standing here and there, glinting from the eerie, green glow of a working Fenton Ghost Portal that was the only source of light. And in front of the swirling void in the hexagonal opening was a huge, green, glowing, _floating_ octopus.

All in all, it was a scene that would stop any young, inexperienced teenager in their tracks.

Unfortunately, Danny did a bit more and followed up with step two: scream as loudly (and, it can be added, shrilly) as one can. The only problem with that action was that no one was around to hear him. _Shoot_, he thought as the creature glared him with cold, malevolent red eyes.

One of its tentacles shot out and grabbed him, stopping his retreat, and Danny squirmed in its grasp. He closed his eyes as it drew towards it, so shell-shocked that his breathing hitched and his heart stopped beating.

Coldness washed over him, starting at his waist and spreading up and down as a bright light glowed through his eyelids. But when he opened his eyes, he didn't see a bright light; he saw a very surprised octopus staring at him.

"What are you looking at?" he asked it with uncharacteristic bravado.

_And why is my voice echoing?_ he asked himself privately.

The octopus let him go and flew upwards, going through the ceiling and leaving Danny staring after it. _Did that …? No way. No. Way. I totally did not just see a ghost-octopus capture me, let me go, and then fly through the ceiling._

Wait. Ghost octopus? But ghosts don't exist!

Mmm-hmm. That's why it was flying and could go intangibly through the roof. _Because octopi do that every day!_

Danny turned to go back upstairs and sort out his thoughts in his room, but noticed that his head was much closer to the ceiling than it should have been. He looked down and gasped at the sight of the floor rushing towards him, closing his eyes tightly and freezing in a spread-eagled skydiving position. When no painful collision came, he carefully opened his eyes and scrutinized the floor that was two inches away from his nose. _I'm floating_, he realized. Oompf. _And now I'm not_. Danny groaned and held a white-gloved hand to his head. How did he get himself in these messes?

By turning ghost portals on from the inside. Obviously. What other way is there for a human to get ghost powers?

_I do not have ghost powers_, part of him denied.

Then what do I have?

_The ability to go intangible and invisible._

And?

_Falling._

Floating.

_So?_

What are the three fundamental powers all ghosts have?

_Intangibility, invisibility, and flying_, he answered automatically. Danny's parents had drilled that lesson into him at the age of six.

See the connection? Danny's world shifted dramatically.

I can walk through walls like a ghost. I can disappear like a ghost. I can _fly_ like a ghost. So am I …?

"No! I am not a ghost!" he shouted, then shrieked as he felt himself sink into the floor again. Instinctively, he levitated himself back up, but couldn't stop and instead continue floating upwards. _I need to learn how to control these powers_, he realized. _I can't do things like this at school! I'd be a freak!_

Danny was given a splendid view of the dust – and other things – under his bed as he entered his bedroom. _Stop!_ he thought. Nothing happened. _Dow_- the mental order came to an abrupt halt as he floated up in front of his mirror.

The phantom was back! Its – no, wait, his; Danny choked at that thought – body glowed with an ethereal white aura. His unnaturally white hair, the opposite of his usual raven black, and his bright green eyes, the same color as the green in the portal, stood out, marking him as something inhuman.

Danny looked down at himself and held out his hands to examine them. Black hazmat suit. White gloves and boots. He flicked some white hair in front of his eyes.

And finally accepted the truth.

_I'm a phantom._

The door downstairs slammed shut.

"Danny!" his dad shouted up the stairs. "We're home! And we have fudge!"

_He sounds considerably happier_, Danny thought, raising an eyebrow at his father's behavior. He was no longer floating in front of his mirror, but was instead back at his desk, trying to do the rest of his homework. Which was rather difficult because of the afternoon's events.

"You can have the fudge after dinner," his mom said firmly, but with an undertone of sadness.

"Ahhh," Jack whined, but immediately brightened again when he saw the small item on the kitchen counter. "Hey, Danny-boy, there's something I've been meaning to show you! Come on down!"

This made Danny panic. He couldn't go down like this! His parents were ghost-hunters, how would they react to his new status? "Um," he called down, wincing from the newfound echo in his voice. "I'm doing my homework!"

Danny could hear his dad's sigh even from his room, causing a sigh of his own. He glanced at the mirror pensively, getting scared and panicky, especially when his right arm began to disappear. _Maybe I should tell them_, he thought. His fear increased, as did the invisibility; now his entire right side was shimmering out of the visible spectrum.

_Or maybe they don't have to know, _another voice said._ I was like this right after the portal accident, but then somehow I changed back to the old me. Maybe I can do it again?_

He closed his eyes and put his hand over his heart again, but nothing happened.

"Come down and set the table, Danny! Jazz will be here any minute, and dinner's almost ready!" his mom called up.

_Shoot_, Danny thought, now hyperventilating. He turned fully invisible and battled with the force for a few minutes, trying to calm down while his mom called him again. _I was thinking about my heart._ Locking his eyes on his now-visible reflection in the mirror, Danny imagined the sound of his beating heart. Almost immediately, he blazed with a white light before it turned into a brilliant ring around his waist. The ring separated into two and one traveled up while the other went down, leaving jeans and a white t-shirt, his regular clothes, behind them. His green eyes became blue again and his hair went to the other end of the color spectrum. When they had completely gone over him, the rings vanished.

"DANNY!"

Don't go down, a small voice whispered in his head.

Shut up, the braver one said.

This is not going to end well, the first one warned.

The door slammed again as Jazz entered the house and greeted their parents.

"**DANNY!"**

It won't end well either way, Danny thought as he left his room.

On the stairs, Danny paused for a moment to consider the past few hours. _Wow, I really need to stop with the multi-mes-arguing-with-each-other thing._

**Sorry this took so long; the whole acceptance part was hard to do without making Danny go into extreme denial or seem too easily accepting.**


	4. The Fenton Finder

**Hey, I have a valid excuse this time! I just had to do something for Halloween!**

**So I did.**

**Once again, disclaimer: No. I don't own Danny Phantom.**

**Chapter 4: The Fenton Finder**

"Hey, Dad," Danny said as he trooped down the stairs casually.

"Danny!" Jack smiled back. He was holding a small box with an antenna in his hands. "Son, meet my latest invention, the Fenton Finder!"

Oh, a new invention. That would most certainly cheer him up.

"Ummm…" Danny once again looked to his mom, but she was busy putting the chicken in the oven.

"This baby uses satellites to locate the ghosts," Jack continued excitedly. He wasn't quite as bouncy as usual, but Danny was happy to see that his dad had somewhat recovered. Jack backed up to stand in the middle of the room. "Watch!" He turned it on.

Beep Beep Beep

"Ghost directly ahead," a pleasant voice said. Jack gazed intently at it and walked forward towards Danny. As he did, the beeping became higher and faster. Danny stared up at him and backed up into the wall – but not _into_ the wall. He frowned when he felt a chill and looked down. _Drat._ His legs had disappeared again! He glanced back up at his father in apprehension.

"Ghost located." Jack looked up eagerly only to see his son backed up against a wall looking nervous. Danny smiled up at him. The smile became relieved when he felt his legs turn normal again. "Ahh, I'll have to fix it," Jack muttered, downcast again. "It's only supposed to point to ghosts."

This last sentence made Danny pause. _Well, I _am_ a ghost. So I really shouldn't be surprised that the Finder is keying into me. I hope they don't realize the truth because of this! I'll have to avoid their inventions from now on._

"Yeah," he said weakly.

"Danny, set the table, dear," his mom said with some strain in her voice. Danny was positive it came from the memory of the Ghost Portal. "Jazz!" she called.

"Here," Danny's sister said as she entered. She waited at the table. "So, anything happen today that I should know about? Like the lab exploding? Or-"

Danny interrupted her. "Oh, yeah, Jazz, I have a, uh, few questions about the, er, math homework. Can you help me?"

"Sure, but after dinner-"

"NO! Uh, I'd like to go over it now before I forget them." Danny gave her a pointed look.

Jazz rolled her eyes. "Fine."

They walked up the stairs and Danny shut his door behind them.

Jazz crossed her arms. "You didn't actually ask me up here for homework help, did you?"

"No."

"Danny, I've told you, I'm trying to –"

"Jazz, listen to me first. Today was a really bad day for them."

"It's always a bad day for them; none of their inventions ever work and none of them are ever going to work because ghosts don't exist and they refuse to accept the truth!"

Danny ignored her outburst. "Jazz, you know the Fenton Ghost Portal? The thing they've been working on for weeks now? It was finally finished today and they tried it but it didn't work. Well, at least not at… yeah. It didn't work at all. It didn't even explode. They're really upset about it. Cut them some slack. Please? I mean, how would you feel if you found out all the work you had done for the past month was wrong?"

Jazz sighed. "Okay."

"Thanks for the help, Jazz," Danny said, raising his voice. He gestured for her to leave and followed her back down.

"Oh, good, you're here. Jack, put that down." Jack pouted as he stopped tinkering and put the Fenton Finder aside. "Sit down, kids."

Jazz and Danny quickly obeyed.

"Buen provecho*!" Maddie said with a smile, lifting the foil off the dish to reveal the growling chicken amid the glaring eyes of corn. Danny jumped out of his seat in surprise.

"MOM!" Jazz yelled, pushing herself away from the table so fast her chair tipped over backwards.

A flustered Maddie slapped the foil back on and took charge. "Jack, go down to the lab and get the ecto-disposal can. Jazz, Danny – Danny?"

"Right here, Mom," Danny said.

His mom looked around. "Where?"

Danny looked down at himself and gasped when he realized he had disappeared completely. Thinking quickly, he moved behind his mom and Jazz and closed his eyes in concentration.

"There you are!" his mom said. Danny opened his eyes. "Hold this down for me!" They quickly put their hands on top of the bulging foil as Maddie searched for an ecto-proof bag.

"AHHHH!" Jack yelled as he tripped down the stairs to the lab. The rest of the Fentons winced when they heard the numerous crashes that followed.

"Jack, are you alright?"

Silence.

"Jack?"

"WOOOOOHOOOOOO! Yeah, baby! No piece of technology bests Jack Fenton!"

Danny cringed. _He must have discovered the portal! I hope they don't ask how it suddenly started working._

"Jack Fenton, what are you-"

"MADDIE! Kids! Come down here and see this!" The three ran down to see what Jack was so excited about, although one already knew.

Maddie let out a shriek when she saw the Ghost Portal. "It's working! _It's working! __**It's working!**_" She jumped up to Jack and began babbling with him. "It must have just needed more power, and blew the fuses for the lab to get it! YES!" They threw their arms around each other.

Danny glanced at his family and then turned away. "I'm just going to go up, get ready for bed, you know, eh heh, yeah." He shivered at the memory of the octopus – ectopus? – he had encountered in the lab and left.

"ROAR!" the chicken growled at him as he walked through the kitchen. The foil had been thrown off and the corn eyes were jumping all over the kitchen like little bouncing balls. Bouncing balls that squeaked. Like mice. Danny stared for a moment before continuing up. _I really wasn't that hungry anyway._

A few minutes later, he heard Jazz's scream as she discovered the kitchen.

Danny had given up on his homework for the night and was just about to go to sleep when his phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Danny."

"Tucker! Um, hi," Danny replied.

"We're still on for tomorrow, right?"

Danny thought for a moment. Tomorrow, tomorrow … right! Tomorrow! Meeting with Tucker in the morning for a video game marathon.

"Danny?"

"Sorry, Tucker. I kinda zoned out there; it's been a hectic day. But yeah, we're on."

"Cool! So what happened today?"

"I'd really rather not go into it," Danny replied. He didn't want anyone to know that he was a ghost, and that was really what his activities today had been centered around.

"That bad, huh?"

"You could say that."

"Well, hey, nobody died, right?"

"Rrright. See you tomorrow, Tucker. I'm going to bed; I'm pretty tired." Danny didn't usually brush off his friends like that, but he just didn't feel up to interacting with anybody. The day's events had really drained him. Or maybe he was finally going into shock.

"Okay. Just come prepared to be beaten to a pulp!"

"You wish. Good night."

"'Night."

'_Well, hey, nobody died, right?'_ _I don't know. Did I die?_ Danny thought as he drifted off to sleep.

**Yeah, sorry it's short, but this is the end of the day (Saturday) in the story and I really don't want chapters to blend the days. Later on, it'll be one story day per chapter. Also, I really want to get this posted.**

***Buen provecho – Spanish for "Good appetite," you know, like "Bon appetite!"**


	5. The Next Day

**Disclaimer: No, I do not own Danny Phantom! How many times do I have to say it?**

**Thanks to all reviewers and people who are still reading this story, and sorry about the wait. Schoolwork became really heavy, and I'm not free yet.**

**Chapter 5: The Next Day**

_Almost done_, Danny chanted enthusiastically in his head as he stared down the last homework problem. His morning had been rather trying and he was really looking forward to going over to Tucker's after finishing his math homework.

He suddenly realized his hand was several inches over the paper and groaned again in annoyance. Why was he floating _again_? That morning, he had woken up several inches over his bed, and his scream had woken up the whole house. His heart had hitched again and he had barely managed to prevent turning into his ghostly self before his family's arrival. Luckily, the shock had made him drop back onto the bed. Unluckily, his left leg had gone invisible and he had hid it under the covers while his parents were there.

He sighed in further irritation when he realized his hand had turned intangible and the pencil slipped through his fingers. With a thump that caught him off guard, Danny fell back into his chair and concentrated on fixing his hand.

The only good point about the morning was that he had discovered that he could, at least marginally, control his powers. It took a lot of concentration and a few seconds, but he could usually, with enough effort, turn himself back to normal.

'Now' was apparently not 'usually.' Using his left hand, Danny circled his answer and then jumped up, cheering.

"YEE-AAAH!"

He didn't come back down and instead hung in the air a few inches above the ground.

"Oh, great," Danny muttered.

"Danny? Are you finished up there?" his mom called up.

"Yeah! I'm going to go over to Tucker's now, 'k? Bye!" Danny raced downstairs on thin air, avoiding the kitchen where his mom was baking ghost cookies.

"Okay?" Maddie said after the front door had shut.

"Hi, Mrs. Foley. Is Tucker here?"

Tucker's mom smiled. "He's already downstairs," she replied as she led him in. "Sorry it's a little messy, but we're trying to clean up the basement and get rid of some of those old boxes."

"It's cool," Danny said, and ran down. "Hey Tucker, ready to get beaten by the one and only Naut?

"Yeah, right," Tucker answered, grinning up at him from his position on the floor. He was emptying an old cardboard box. "Friar Tuck can beat the Astro-_Nut_ any day!" With a huff, he pulled the last item out of the box and stood up, tossing the box to the other side of the room into a huge pile.

"Whoa, are those all empty?" Danny asked.

"You bet!" Tucker said proudly.

"You're getting rid of a lot of stuff."

"Actually, not really. Mom said to get rid of the boxes. So I am. But now I have no way to organize my tech!" The last sentence was an almost anguished sob.

Danny shivered suddenly as he felt a breeze blow by him. _Wow, that draft is really cold_. "I don't know, Tuck," he said while observing the other huge pile, only this one was made of old Ipods, phones, cameras, computers – well, you get the idea. He picked up Tucker's phone from fourth grade. "Do you really have to keep every single piece of technology you've ever owned?"

Tucker snatched the old gadget back. "Hey, hands off! This one was my first," he said, gazing lovingly at it.

Danny just shook his head, but stopped instantly when he saw a person standing in front of the box-pile. _How'd he get in here? And what's he doing? He looks like Tucker right now, only he's looking at the boxes._

"Hey, Tuck?" Danny asked. "Who's that?" The man froze and turned around to look at them. Danny stared back at the portly, glowing figure. _Wait a moment, wait a moment. Glowing? And floating? He must be a ghost!_

"Who's who?" Tucker turned around, but didn't see anything.

"Never mind," Danny said quickly. That had confirmed his guess; the ghost had gone invisible. _But what does he want?_

Tucker looked at Danny pensively for a moment and then shrugged. "Wait here, I'll be right back with the games."

Danny nodded.

The moment Tucker had turned the corner the ghost appeared again, making Danny jump.

"Beware!"

"Um. Okay?" Danny wasn't sure of what to say. The guy was definitely a ghost, but he really wasn't scary. Seriously, what type of menacing ghost wore _overalls_?

"Fear me! For I am the Box Ghost, master of all things cardboard and square!"

"And you are telling me this because…"

"You shall tremble before me when you meet your untimely Doom!" The ghost raised his arms and the boxes began to levitate.

Now Danny was a little scared. _What should I do?_ His left arm began to feel cold and he watched, dismayed, as it started turning invisible.

The Box Ghost stared, too. Humans couldn't turn invisible! So that would mean standing before him was a ghost.

"You're a ghost?"

Danny shivered slightly at the new title, but bravely stood up. "Yep."

The Box Ghost paused for a moment and Danny watched him carefully, unsure of how he would take it. "Well, no matter. I will relieve this house of all its cardboard squareness and then deal with you and the human!"

Danny opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by Tucker's entrance. The Box Ghost quickly dove into the box pile.

"Here. Prepare for the worst beating of your life!" Danny snorted in reply and began to play, but was too preoccupied with the Box Ghost.

"Yes!" Tucker shouted and punched the air. "Score one for the Friar!" Danny smiled distractedly, but it turned into a frown when he saw some boxes in the pile begin to glow and rise. Tucker was too excited to notice. The ghost suddenly appeared beside them, smiling maliciously (or trying to) while the boxes raced forward.

"But score zero for Tucker!" Danny shouted as he threw himself at his friend, pretending to be upset. The boxes flew over them and the Box Ghost disappeared again.

"Hey, Danny!" Tucker whined. "You don't have to be so bitter about it."

"Sorry," Danny apologized as they got up and returned to the video games.

A few minutes later, Danny had tackled Tucker again to prevent him from being pulverized by the technology inside the unemptied boxes, this time with the excuse that he had tripped and lost his balance.

Tucker peeled his face off the floor as his technology landed all around them. "Man, that's the second time today," he complained.

Danny grimaced.

When they were in the middle of level three, the Box Ghost appeared above Tucker and took in a huge breath to bellow out his speech when Danny, who had heard him, leapt up and over Tucker and tackled the Box Ghost, who disappeared immediately upon hitting the floor and intangibly escaped. Danny felt himself begin to sink into the ground and closed his eyes in concentration.

"Dude, what was that?" Tucker asked, looking at him oddly. He knew that Danny was never a sore loser, particularly when he was playing with his friends.

_How can he not notice the ghost trying to attack him?_ Danny wondered.

"Ummm…" Danny stuttered for a moment. He needed an excuse to go so that he could take care of the ghost without coming out and saying, 'Oh, just me protecting you from a ghost. Do you mind if I use my new ghost powers to get rid of it?' "I just remembered! I have some more, uh, English homework due tomorrow!"

"So?" Tucker didn't see the cause for alarm. "Just do it when you get home!"

"But I can't."

"Why not?"

"It's a major project."

"WHAT? There's a major project in English due tomorrow?" Tucker gasped.

_Shoot, I forgot he was in my English class! Way to go, Fenton_, Danny berated himself. "No! No, it's the reading he assigned. I haven't done it yet!" Actually he had, but he needed to go.

Tucker had been Danny's best friend since Kindergarten, and he could tell that Danny was hiding something. Knowing that his friend didn't trust him hurt; after all, they had been through a lot together. But even if Danny didn't trust him, Tucker trusted Danny.

"Okay," Tucker said, looking slightly dejected. Danny immediately felt guilty, but he had to get that ghost away from Tucker – and the boxes.

"Maybe I can come over later today?" Danny asked hopefully. "If I finish the reading?"

"Sure," Tucker replied. Danny turned and left, heading up the stairs and then into the bathroom on the main level.

_If I can prevent my powers from acting up, I should be able to use them. Right?_ Danny really hoped so; if he was going to protect Tucker without blowing his secret, then he would have to do everything without being seen. Danny faced the mirror and closed his eyes tightly in concentration. The cool feeling was slow to appear, but when it did, it spread rapidly, especially when his mind showed him an image of Tucker crushed beneath the huge pile of boxes. When he opened his eyes, Danny freaked out at the sight of nothing in the mirror before he remembered that he had actually been trying to go invisible.

_Time to go get that ghost_, he thought. In truth, he was a little scared. He had never fought a ghost before (the ectopus didn't count; it had just flown off, although why he still had no idea) and he was worried about his secret.

Opening the door, he headed back downstairs as silently as he could. _This is where flying would really come in handy_.

Mr. Foley shook his head at the sight of the bathroom door opening and closing itself. He needed to work less and get more sleep.

Danny entered the basement and stood by the door, looking for the ghost. Tucker had his back to him, but if he turned around – _wait, no, I'm invisible_. It was hard to remember that.

Danny walked over to the box pile. He is the BOX Ghost, so he should be near the BOXES. He peered into them and jumped back when he saw two red eyes suddenly appear in one of the nooks.

"Bew-"

Danny quickly clapped a hand over the surprised Box Ghost's mouth as Tucker turned around to see who had spoken. Seeing no one, he shrugged and went back to his work.

Danny had frozen, terrified of turning visible, allowing the Box Ghost to intangibly escape from the pile and fly out the back wall. Danny almost shouted in annoyance, before he realized that that would be a sure-fire way to be revealed. He noticed that he was once again sinking into the ground.

_Good, now I can follow that pesky creep_. With all his thoughts turned to finding the ghost, he flew through the wall to the backyard and turned tangible again, looking around. No ghost.

_Where could he have gone?_ Danny knew that searching for him would be fruitless; the ghost could turn invisible just like him after all. _Well, he's not in Tucker's house, so he can't hurt Tucker and that's all that matters. Maybe I can go back now and-_

_No. It would take me several hours, not ten minutes, to do the reading. He'd get suspicious_. Danny yawned. _And I'm tired. But I didn't do that much. All I did was go invisible, walk around, go intangible, fly a little…_

He snorted. Yep, all the normal activities any other teenager would be doing. Danny hid behind a tree and concentrated on making himself visible again. _Wow, that was harder than usual. _A few minutes later, he dragged himself home and trudged up to his room, only grunting when his parents saw and greeted him. Three words filled his head as he collapsed on his bed.

_I. Am. Exhausted._

**Back to Physics homework.**


	6. School

**Disclaimer: Just look at previous chapters, folks.**

**Inspiration for the last chapter was rather scarce. Hopefully, this chapter is better than the others.**

**Chapter 6: School**

Danny scribbled down his answer to the last question on the English worksheet furiously, trying to get it done before the time limit was up and they would have to turn it in, but it was just so long. It seemed as though he had written a whole page, but only a short paragraph stood underneath the question. He glanced up at the clock above the door. Two minutes left! Turning frantic, he wrote faster, his handwriting becoming even sloppier, when he noticed that his hand was beginning to look slightly bluish. He had seconds before the pencil would fall from his grasp. Scratch that. Danny grabbed for his pencil franticly, but his hand kept going right through it. The intangibility began to creep up his arm like a spreading disease.

"Mr. Fenton," Lancer said firmly, "I realize you are not the most coordinated person in the world, but – _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!_ What's happening to your arm?"

Danny stared up at his shocked teacher with terrified eyes. What was he going to say? _What could he say?_

"What a geek," Dash sneered from his seat a few rows away. "No, he's worse than a geek – he's a freak!" The heads of the students around him snapped up and focused on his now-fully-intangible arm, and he glanced quickly at the looks of horror and fear on Tucker and Sam's faces, the raw repulsion his best friends felt towards him that stabbed a needle straight through his chest. The rest of the class strained their necks to see the commotion around Danny and Danny felt himself fall abruptly through his chair and hit the ground roughly. He scrambled back in a jerky crabwalk from the faces of his teacher and classmates peering down at him from above, his mind screaming for him to run, flee, disappear-

The rest of the class gasped when Danny Fenton became fully invisible from their gazes. But they still looked in his direction, seeming to be able to see right into him. He was sure they could see his heart hammering against his chest at the rate of a hummingbird's, how it suddenly hitched and stopped –

Danny sat up with a sharp gasp, eyes flying wide open. He was panting and could still feel his heart beat racing. Gulping in deep breaths, he forced it to slow down. _Just a nightmare. A really scary nightmare._ He laid back down and reached near his feet for the covers. It was very cold for some reason. And hard. Not comfortable at all. And for goodness' sake,_ where were his covers?_

He peeked open an eye and glanced around at the familiar sight of the refrigerator and the breakfast table. _What the – what am I doing in the kitchen?_ The clock over the oven said it was three forty-seven. _I must have sleepwalked or something._ With a sigh, Danny stumbled upstairs in a foggy stupor and climbed back into bed, but he tossed and turned, unable to close his eyes. Every time he did, he saw the disgusted faces of his friends and classmates around him. At five, he gave up and just laid there, fully awake and unable to keep his thoughts away from school and the horrible consequences that would happen if his secret was revealed. Which it probably would be.

His breathing became shallower and quick. A tingling sensation fizzed through his arms and he turned to see that they had turned invisible again. He tried to calm himself down. My emotions are sparking it, so if I just stay emotionless, I should be fine, he reasoned. Eyes closed, he shoved the feeling away and his arms returned to the visible world. The next few hours were spent trying to stay visible and tangible. He ended up phasing through his bed several times and landing underneath it, once even going through his floor as well and ending up in the kitchen (_oh, so that's how I got there_). Thankfully, he didn't have to deal with floating. But despite this, Danny was not happy. No matter how much he tried, Danny couldn't keep his mind from picturing all the ways he could reveal himself in school and he couldn't prevent himself from becoming scared and worried, in turn making him unable to hide his new powers.

By the time his alarm clock finally rang, Danny's mind was in state of a nervous wreck, but when he got up, he suffered from a bone-weary tiredness that only those experiencing severe mental stress and physical exhaustion could feel. He found that he couldn't summon up the energy to care as he blearily pulled his shirt on and half-walked, half-tripped down the stairs due to a foot randomly going intangible.

"Good morning, Danny," his older sister greeted him perkily.

Danny grunted in reply and pulled out his morning cereal while Jazz continued to read her book. Still groggy, he mechanically began to eat it only to find the spoon somehow in his bowl instead of his hand.

"Danny, you don't have to be so loud," Jazz said, looking at him over her book. Danny just blinked back at her and looked down. With an exasperated sigh, Jazz once again became absorbed in the mysteries of psychology while Danny observed his arm. Hmmm. Slightly bluish. A little cold and empty-feeling.

"Ak!" That woke Danny up. He quickly hid it under the table, hoping that Jazz hadn't seen it, and used his left hand to gulp down his breakfast before running out the door with his backpack and a quick "Bye!"

Jazz didn't even look up.

After a bus ride in which he half-dozed with a small string of drool dangling from the corner of his mouth, Danny trudged over to his usual meeting place with Sam and Tucker, a little apprehensive.

Tucker noticed it immediately, but chose not to say anything. It probably had something to do with yesterday. "Hey, dude."

Sam looked up. "Hi, Danny."

Danny tried to give them his customary bright smile, but was too tired to pull it off.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. A little tired, though."

"We noticed," Tucker said dryly. "What were you doing last night?"

_Oh, just worrying about you guys finding out about me being a ghost._ "Studying."

They both looked at him oddly. "Really?" Danny mentally smacked himself.

Tucker sighed. Danny was hiding something again, and the fact that he wasn't letting Sam know about it did little to ease the hurt or Danny's mistrust.

RING RING RING RING RING

"Oh, I'd better get to class," Danny excused himself. He rubbed the back of his neck nervously before running into the building, only to trip and fall over… well, to Tucker and Sam, it looked like his own two feet. Exchanging looks, they walked up the steps, Sam adopting a demure attitude and a slight smirk and looking down at him.

"You do that."

Danny didn't even hear it. He was frozen with horror at the sight of his absent right hand. His arm slowly followed it. No! he begged silently. Remembering his practice yesterday, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of a warm hand instead of the cold one he currently had.

"Hey, man, you're gonna be late," Tucker said worriedly as he looked down at Danny.

In response, Danny began picking up his books, only to have them fall to the ground when his left arm went intangible. He glanced at Tucker.

"Dude, are you sure you're alright?" Tucker asked as he bent down and began helping to pick up the books.

Danny nodded. "Like I said, just tired. I studied, and then I couldn't sleep last night."

"Really? I'd have thought studying was the perfect way to lull a person's brain into a dreamless stupor." Tucker tried to lighten the mood.

Danny just shrugged, making Tucker frown. "Me, too. Apparently not." They entered the classroom and Danny stopped short at the same scene he had seen in his dream. He flashed cold.

Tucker blinked hard to make his eyes focus. He must be tired, too. Danny had just flickered out of view for a nanosecond, and he only saw double or zero when he was ready to doze off.

When the class ignored him, Danny stiffly moved to his seat with Tucker behind him. He fell into his chair and felt his emotions leave him as he desperately tried to pay attention to Mr. Lancer's dull spiel on _Julius Caesar_.

BANG! Danny jerked awake when he dropped through his chair onto the floor. The class erupted into laughter and Mr. Lancer looked at him, annoyed, as he scrambled back into his seat and prayed no one had noticed the disappearance of his leg.

Tucker blinked again.

The rest of the class was an internal struggle between Danny and his exhaustion and barely-controllable powers that he was barely winning, especially since the class was almost an exact replica of his dream, excluding the "freak" part. He sighed with relief when it was over and absently walked to his locker, located in a secluded and inconvenient hall, to get his books when he heard a scream.

"AHHHH!" Mikey, one of the nerds, was sprinting down the hall and screaming at the top of his lungs. Well that was nothing new; Mikey was usually running away from somebody. _Who is it this time?_ An ectopus followed him hot on his heels. Danny turned back to his locker before turning again and blinking up at the roaring ghost. _I should probably stop it._

_And how am I going to do that?_

_Too much brainpower needed._ Danny just stared up at the ghost, who flew towards him.

Without thinking, Danny's arm shot out and punched it, sending it spiraling up to the ceiling. Bits of dust sprinkled down on him and the ectopus shook itself before growling at him and speeding towards him again.

Once more, Danny's arm moved in a blur and made the ghost experience a new force that caused it to see stars in front of its eyes. Dazed, it flew up through the roof with Danny staring after it.

Too tired to make any sense out of what had just happened, Danny walked numbly back to his locker and began turning the dial.

"Hey, Fen-ton!" Dash's nasal voice shouted as he rounded the corner into the corridor. A large hand grabbed Danny's shoulder and twirled him around so that Danny was looking up into the hard, blue eyes of the school bully.

"I just got a D on our spelling test! You know what that means?" the football player snarled.

Danny's mouth answered before his brain could process it. "That you belong in 1st Grade Writing class?"

Dash's face became bright red and with a growl, he shoved Danny into his locker and slammed the door, leaving the hall with an echoing laugh.

If Danny had been able to, he would have slapped himself. _What was I thinking, talking back to Dash? Oh, that's right – I wasn't thinking. At all. Clearly._

"Danny?"

"Tucker!"

Tucker looked around for his friend before realizing what must have happened. Well, there was a reason he went out of his way to go down the usually-empty, minor hallway that lead to nowhere. He walked over to Danny's locker. "What's your number again?"

"58 – 42 – 54." Tucker expertly twirled the dial and Danny stepped out in relief.

"Thanks, man."

"No prob." Tucker began to fiddle with his PDA when he suddenly shook his head.

"What?" Danny asked curiously.

"Nothing. I think I'm tired, too, or I'm coming down with something, 'cause I keep seeing you sort of flicker."

"Flicker?" Danny sincerely hoped Tucker was not noticing what he thought he was noticing.

"Yeah, it's like one moment you're there, and the next you're still there, but in between, you're not. And sometimes it's just a small part of you, like your arm."

Goosebumps started crawling up Danny's arms and he felt his legs begin to go cold. With rising panic, Danny tried to beat it down, but Tucker was really not helping.

"I could have sworn you were missing an arm earlier, but after several seconds, it was right there. I don't know how I missed it. It was almost like it was … invisible or something."

On the word invisible, Danny backed up and held his hands behind him so as to brace himself against his locker, but he didn't meet any resistance. Tucker's eyes suddenly flew wide open and his mouth fell.

Danny looked down and almost screamed. He was halfway in the lockers! His chest and one of his legs were sticking out, but they were bluish and intangible. He looked back up at Tucker, unable to bear the sight of his disgusted face but also unable to look anywhere else. They locked eyes.

Tucker immediately turned to his PDA. What to do when your friend is stuck halfway into the school lockers? Nothing came up.

"EEK!" Danny's squeak made Tucker look up just in time to see his best friend slowly sink down through the floor and out of sight.

**Evil cliffhanger, I know. But I'm tired! And this is the longest chapter yet! I don't mind long chapters, but I'd like the chapters in a story to have roughly the same length. Please give me feedback; criticism is welcome. **


	7. The Confrontation

**Disclaimer: Look at earlier chapters.**

**Thanks to all reviewers!**

**Chapter 7: The Confrontation**

What do you do when your best friend backs literally into the wall and then sinks through the floor?

Tucker had no idea. In fact, half of his mind thought that Danny actually hadn't been in the hallway, and that he had just imagined the scene, but Danny's backpack, sitting in front of his open locker, said otherwise.

Danny began to float up from the lower level and successfully made himself invisible. The flying seemed to come naturally while the invisibility took some effort. It was worth it, though; he really did not want anyone to see him at the moment, Tucker least of all. Carefully, Danny peered up at his friend with only his invisible head poking up out of the floor and, despite the possible consequences, laughed a little at the look on Tucker's face. He looked like he had just been run over by a truck. The smile, however, was soon wiped off of Danny's face.

"Danny?" Tucker whispered. He could have sworn he'd heard a chuckle.

Danny froze.

"Danny," Tucker said with more confidence.

Danny felt his invisibility flicker and Tucker suddenly screamed and jumped back, dropping his PDA. Danny shivered at his reaction and rose the rest of the way to hover slightly over the floor. Mentally, he noted that floating was definitely easier than turning invisible or intangible, almost like how walking was easier than doing cartwheels or flips. After a few seconds of intense concentration, Danny managed to turn tangible again and he dropped to the floor, looking anywhere but at Tucker's fearful gaze. He picked up the PDA and walked slowly over to the frozen boy, holding it out to him.

Tucker stared at Danny before wordlessly taking the offered PDA. Both boys stood in silence for a few seconds, Danny nervously rubbing the back of his neck and Tucker fiddling with his PDA.

Finally, Tucker broke it.

"Dude, you have a lot of explaining to do."

Danny's right arm began to flicker in and out of sight rapidly until it settled on being completely invisible. Tucker looked at the space where it should have been and then met Danny's blue eyes.

Danny flinched a little at first, expecting to see fear, repulsion, anger. The fear was there. Tucker's teal eyes were hard as well, but instead of showing repulsion, they showed … was that … concern?

The late bell rang and Danny's leg turned invisible and intangible, causing him to fall flat on his face.

"Tell you next period?" he asked. Tucker nodded and the boys ran to science class where the teacher had just set up a partner lab.

"Late," the teacher noted. "Get to work! I'm not explaining the directions again!" He handed them a worksheet with instructions and the duo went to a station on the edge of the activity.

Silence reined again as they began setting up, rearranging beakers and measuring various liquids, until Dash walked past.

"I'll be seeing you after school, Fentina," he sneered at Danny, looking him straight in the eyes. He clearly hadn't forgotten Danny's earlier comment. Danny cringed and jumped when he heard shattering glass.

Dash snorted at the sight of a broken beaker beside Danny and continued walking. "Loser."

Danny stared down at the shards of glass by his feet. _It could have been worse. He could have noticed that the beaker fell __**through**__ instead of __**out**__ of my hands._ His breath came slightly faster at that and his eyes widened when he saw that his leg was beginning to go invisible.

After Danny made his leg visible again and the teacher cleaned up the mess with a sharp reprimand, Tucker put everything down, faced Danny, and waited for Danny to talk.

Danny took several deep breaths and stayed silent.

"Dude, whatever it is, you can tell me. It can't be that hard, not after the time you had to explain to the whole school why your parents were rigging the classrooms."

Danny blushed furiously at that memory and began to unconsciously sink into the floor. When he realized he had to look up to meet Tucker's gaze, he squeaked in surprise and tried unsuccessfully to float back up. "Help?"

Tucker hesitantly reached down and pulled Danny up out of the floor. "Whoa, you're really light!" he exclaimed.

"Really? I feel kind of heavy."

Tucker shook his head. "Explain."

"Well, usually I can float back up, but this time, I felt too heavy to –"

"You're babbling," Tucker interrupted.

Danny fell silent, considering what to say. He really didn't want to tell Tucker that he was a ghost because he was scared of the possible rejection. But he did owe it to Tucker to tell him; they were best friends!

_Start with the basics, Fenton._

"I've been going through stuff and randomly turning invisible throughout the day," he began slowly.

_I noticed_, Tucker thought wryly.

"Well, actually throughout the past _few_ days. I even floated several times, especially when I was intangible. Do-do you know the basic abilities all ghosts have?"

Tucker shook his head.

"All ghosts have the ability to go invisible, the ability to go intangible, and the ability to fly," Danny recited, picking up speed. "Some have additional powers, a very common one being extra strength and durability, while others have a specialized 'talent.' But all have the above three abilities."

Danny could almost see the cogs turning in Tucker's mind.

"Invisibility, intangibility, and flying?" Tucker asked.

Danny nodded.

"And you've been doing all three?"

Danny nodded again.

Tucker blinked in astonishment. _No way._ "You have _ghost powers_?"

Danny just watched him as the full implications hit him, looking for any sign of fear, disgust, hatred, or, worst of all, rejection.

He was so surprised by Tucker's response that his entire upper body flickered into invisibility for a moment.

"AWESO-"

"Shhhh," Danny hissed.

"Oh, right, sorry," Tucker whispered sheepishly while the two ignored the stares coming from the rest of the room. "But, dude! That is so cool!"

Danny opened his mouth to respond that, no, it was _not_ cool when the bell rang.

"We'll finish the lab tomorrow!" the teacher announced. "Keep the papers and no homework tonight!"

The class filed out and Danny dragged Tucker back to his locker, tripping several times along the way when his feet turned intangible due to his agitation.

"Do you have any idea what you could do?" Tucker said excitedly. "You could-"

Danny cut him off. "Be known as a total freak. Yeah, I know."

Tucker went silent. "Why do you say that?"

"Tucker, I've been randomly missing limbs! I've been tripping all over the place! I've been falling through the floors – AAH!" Tucker hauled Danny up again. "I have no control!" He flashed invisible in his panic. "If anyone catches me, I'll go from geek to _freak_ around here!"

"So what if you had control?" Now it was Danny's turn to be silent. "What if you learned to control them? Danny, you're not a freak. Just because you have ghost powers doesn't mean you're a freak. It means you have some really unique abilities that most people don't."

"I doubt that's the way everyone else will feel about it!" Danny retorted.

Tucker desperately tried to think of something that would comfort his friend. "Then like I said: keep them under wraps. Learn to control them." He smiled and tried to cheer Danny up. "Just think of what you could do to Dash! And he would never even know it was you!"

Danny smiled briefly at this and they began walking to class, but his frown soon returned. _He doesn't know it all. He thinks all I got were powers! Should I tell him?_

The late bell rang and they ran to their next class, late for the second time that day.

The rest of the school day went the way second period had. Danny's ghost powers would kick in at the most inconvenient times, Tucker would try to cover for him, and Danny would try to return to normal. They were very lucky at lunch; Sam was in the front office (something about a new menu) and Tucker learned who Danny wanted to know his secret: namely, no one. Last period, gym class, could have gone better, though. Danny was incredibly grateful that Tucker accepted him and wasn't shunning him, instead trying to make him see the bright side of the situation. But no matter what, the truth still loomed: Tucker did not know the whole story.

Promptly after last period, Danny was seen running down the halls from a yelling and furious Dash Baxter. Tucker followed at a safe distance. Boy, could Danny run. Panting, Danny opened a door to some stairs and leapt up them, almost, but not quite, flying. _I don't remember there being this many stairs._ He suddenly reached the end and looked up to see the ladder leading to the school's roof. _Oh._ He looked down, where the sound Dash's heavy footsteps was coming from, and then threw himself out the trapdoor and behind some grey bags. He swallowed hard and tried to calm his racing heart to no avail. _I really wish I could disappear right now_, he thought. _Oh, wait. Duh._ Danny closed his eyes tightly and imagined the cold feeling of being unseen. _I don't want to be seen, I don't want to be seen, I don't want to be seen._

Dash arrived at the roof top and looked around in confusion. Where was Fenton? He could have sworn he'd chased the geek up here, but there was no sign of him, not even behind the wall of bags. The sound of heavy pants behind him made him turn.

Tucker gasped for breath and braced himself on his knees. Really, how did Danny run so fast? Glancing up, he saw Dash walk towards him. _Uh-oh_. Tucker scrambled out of the way, but Dash just walked past him and to the trapdoor.

"I may not be able to find Fenton, but you'll do just as well!" the bully said with a malicious smile, and closed the door behind him.

A click told Tucker that he had locked it.

Danny dropped the invisibility, making Tucker jump, and walked over to him. "He locked it, didn't he?"

Tucker nodded. "How are we going to get down?"

Danny looked around and walked to the edge of the roof. "Not that way, that's for sure." It was a three-story drop that made him dizzy just looking at it.

Tucker sat down. "Well what are we going to do? Wait until tomorrow for someone to find us? Wait until our parents call and then get in trouble?"

Danny sat down beside him and groaned. Tucker glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.

"You said you had been floating several times, right?" Tucker asked delicately. Danny nodded. "So maybe you could fly down and then go in and unlock the door from the inside?"

That made Danny's head snap up. "Tucker, the power that I have had the least experience with is flying!" His hand suddenly fell through the roof.

"You were doing fine before!" Tucker argued. "When you went intangible and floated through the floor?"

"But I didn't do so great in science class! Remember?"

"So you don't want to fly?"

Danny stayed silent.

"How about this: think of this as one of the first lessons on controlling your powers with the one and only Tucker Foley!" Tucker put on a full-of-himself expression.

Danny snorted. "Fine. But I am not going to start it by just jumping off the building on a death spree!" He stood up and closed his eyes. Whenever he was floating, he always felt light. Cold for invisibility, empty for intangibility, and light for flying. After a few moments, he opened them. "Well I feel stupid."

"Try again?" Tucker suggested.

Danny closed his eyes once more and focused not only on being light, but also on going up. He strained upward and slowly felt himself rise a few inches.

Tucker smiled. "I knew you could do it!"

"I don't think I can," Danny said. Tucker noticed the slight strain in his voice.

"Why not?"

"I just feel so _heavy_. Like at any second I'm going to – crash!" On the last word Danny dropped heavily back onto the roof. "Well that didn't work."

"Then how did you do it so easily before?"

Danny thought back to when he had accidentally revealed himself to Tucker. "I was intangible then. I think it's easier to fly when I'm intangible; I'm lighter." When Tucker opened his mouth Danny continued hurriedly. "But I don't think I can just go completely intangible right now."

"You went completely invisible."

"I was really scared."

Tucker sighed and lied down. "Then I guess we just wait. This isn't going to be pretty."

Danny spread out beside him. "No. It's not." Seconds, then minutes passed. Danny glanced at Tucker. _I could probably do it in my ghost form, but that would mean telling him the whole truth. What will he do when he finds out I'm a ghost? __**If**__ I tell him. I should, but I don't want to. I'm too scared. Coward._

After ten minutes of debate Danny sat up and took a deep breath. "Tucker, there's something I didn't tell you."

Tucker sat up as well. "What?"

"Were you wondering how I got the, um, ghost powers?"

Tucker paused for a moment. "Not really, but now I'm curious."

"On Saturday, my parents finished building the Fenton Ghost Portal. It was a complete failure. They plugged it in and nothing happened." Danny swallowed nervously. "I went inside to check it out and tripped over a wire or something. I hit the wall and immediately, everything lit up." Tucker stared at him with wide eyes. "My hand hit the 'ON' button and the next thing I knew, I was in a huge amount of pain. It was horrible." He shuddered.

"What happened then?" Tucker asked.

Danny closed his eyes. "When I woke up, I looked really – different."

"Different how?"

Now Danny stood up, his head turned to the side. "Different like this." He held his breath and stopped his heart, making the rings of light form and separate. They moved in opposite directions and then, before Tucker, stood a ghost.

Tucker's brain froze as he stared in disbelief at the white-haired, jumpsuited, glowing figure in front of him. When Danny had gathered the courage to look up, Tucker gasped at the sight of Danny's now glowing, electric-green eyes.

"I didn't just get ghost powers. I became a ghost."

Tucker walked nervously towards Danny. Without thinking, he asked, "Are you okay?"

Danny's head snapped around and Tucker flinched at his new eyes. "Am I okay? Of course I'm not okay! Tucker, I'm a ghost!"

Tucker's scrambled thoughts formed into some sort of order. "No, you're not."

"What?"

"No. You're not. You were a human during school today. You were a human yesterday."

"With ghost powers."

"With ghost powers," Tucker conceded. "But a human nonetheless. Black hair. Blue eyes. And throughout the whole time, you've always been Danny. Danny the human. Danny the human with ghost powers. And now Danny the ghost. But each one is Danny, the teenager I am best friends with."

Danny looked at Tucker for a moment and Tucker was able to meet his green eyes without wincing.

"I think I'll try the floating thing again."

Tucker watched as Danny bowed his head and closed his eyes and once again slowly rose. Peeking one eye open, Danny smiled when he saw that he was actually doing it with next to no effort.

"So, you think you can do it?" Tucker began walking towards the edge of the roof and Danny followed him almost subconsciously while still floating in the air.

"Maybe." They reached the edge and looked down.

"Are you sure?" Tucker asked Danny worriedly, not looking at him. _The ghost Danny is going to take some getting used to._

"No."

And with that, Danny floated over the edge and dropped a few feet with a scream before regaining his – well, you couldn't exactly call it footing.

"Danny!"

"I'm good!" _I hope._

He slowly lowered himself to the ground with Tucker watching all the while, and when he reached it, he cheered.

"YEAH! I DID IT!" At that moment, his hands fizzed and the boys watched as a blue light ran over them and then down Danny's arms and the rest of his body, turning him back into the human Danny. Ecstatic, Danny raced up the stairs to free Tucker, who walked back to the trapdoor in a slight daze.

Yep. This was definitely going to take some getting used to.

**I know it's longer than all the others, but I really didn't want to split it. So hopefully you don't mind the length.**


	8. Transformation

**Once again, thank you reviewers! I feel more motivated to update when I know that people are actually reading and enjoying the story.**

**To a reviewer: You're right, he could have. Let's just pretend that Danny's not very logical and that he didn't want anyone on the other side of the door to see an intangible Fenton floating through the school roof or appearing out of thin air, which would probably happen since he didn't have great control over his powers and would flicker into visibility if the person on the other side startled him. He was more comfortable floating down along a wall where he could see everyone and make sure they weren't looking at him and that they wouldn't startle him.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.**

**Chapter 8: Transformation**

Danny and Tucker were walking to Tucker's house to hang out while Danny told Tucker the whole story, gesticulating wildly and watching him out of the corner of his eye all the while.

"So that's what you were doing yesterday!" Tucker realized. Then he snickered. "A Box Ghost?"

"Yep." They walked into Tucker's home and headed down to the basement. "I couldn't believe you didn't notice him!"

"Now that you're telling me, I can't believe it either!" Tucker laughed. They dropped their backpacks by the stairs. "And the sound I heard, that was you invisibly fighting off the" – he chuckled again – "Box Ghost?"

"I didn't exactly fight him. It was more like I showed up and he flew aw-_what_ is _that_?"

Tucker turned around and gawked. "I didn't know rats were green. Or that they glowed."

"A ghost-rat? What is it _doing_ here?"

The ghost-rat snarled nastily at the two shell-shocked teens for interrupting its activities and they jumped back and screamed in complete synchronization. Danny's heart hitched, causing the rings of light to wash over him again and turn him back into a ghost. However, neither boy noticed. They were more focused on the foot-long, pointed incisors that had suddenly grown out of the rat's mouth.

"What do we do?" Tucker yelled.

"Get it out!" Danny ran over and tried to grab the rodent, but it leapt up and jumped on his face. "AAH! TUCKER!"

Tucker grabbed it by the tail and pulled it off Danny. "I got it!" The rat abruptly phased out of his grip and he gulped. "I don't got it."

Danny leaped towards the rat once more, but it turned around and bit him. "Oww!" He pulled back for a moment, nursing his hand, before standing up straight and glaring down at the creature, incensed, his green eyes burning with intensity. "Guess we'll have to do it the rough way!"

Tucker watched, astonished, as his best friend wrapped his arms around the ghost-rat, hugged it tight so that it was pinned and unable to move, and floated over to the door. He opened it and Danny floated out with the struggling, growling animal. The unfortunate rat's tail was grabbed the second time that day, but instead of being dragged, it was swung around in circles like a lasso faster and faster, its legs pinned to its sides by the velocity.

When the rat was only seen as a blur, Danny exhaled sharply and let go of the angry critter. He and Tucker watched as the rat went flying out of sight, its high-pitched protest growing fainter and fainter until it ended with a thud.

"Well that was different," Danny commented. Tucker nodded in agreement and they walked back inside, shutting the door behind them. Danny watched amusedly as Tucker quickly locked it as well.

"You do realize that that won't stop a ghost from entering, right?"

Tucker looked over at him and then raised his eyebrows. "Why'd you change?"

Danny frowned. "What?"

"Why'd you turn into a ghost again?"

Danny glanced down at himself. "I'm not sure. I didn't do it intentionally." His face paled as he thought about that. "Oh my gosh! I can't do this in the middle of school!" His form began to fade into invisibility.

"Then control it! I know you can; you did it on the roof." The faded-out Danny nodded hesitantly and in a few seconds, the ring appeared again and human Danny, still rather washed-out, was sitting on Tucker's chair. Tucker looked at him seriously. Danny was right; it would be a disaster if he did this at school.

_Then let's find out why it happened._ He pulled out his PDA. "Why did you do it?"

Danny considered the question. "I truly don't know. I don't even know when it happened."

"It must have been when we first saw the rat because you were already a ghost when we started trying to get rid of it."

"Did I go invisible?" Danny asked slowly.

"I don't know, dude." Tucker shrugged. "I was more concerned about the rat that had been exposed to nuclear radiation sitting on my desk. Why?"

"I think that my emotions tend to trigger my powers. Whenever I get upset or scared or something, I go intangible or invisible. Floating and, and _this_ haven't really been showing up much, but the other two have."

"So you're saying it's kind of like instincts?" Tucker looked up 'instincts' on his search engine.

"No, it's like emotions," Danny corrected him.

Tucker scrutinized the results. "They're pretty much the same thing. Instincts usually spark emotions."

"So you're saying I 'instinctively' changed into a ghost?" Danny asked skeptically, using air quotes. "I don't seem to remember having _that_ instinct."

"Danny, do you really think you would have had that instinct before - when you were completely human?" Tucker said as he scrolled down a list of different instincts. Defense. Fight or flight. Survival. He blinked at the last one. "Actually, I don't think the instinct was to turn into a ghost; I think it was more of survival."

"How does that make any sense?"

"Well, think about it. Like you said earlier, ghosts have more durability than humans, right? So you would automatically adopt your more durable – form? – if you were being attacked or saw something that your mind perceived as a serious threat to your survival."

Danny looked at him. "You think I changed because I had a better chance of surviving as a ghost than as a human?"

Tucker nodded.

"That actually makes some sense," Danny said as he considered it more. He then smiled widely. "And I won't have to worry about it at school!"

"Why?"

"I didn't do it when Dash came today, and he's the worst thing in the school."

"Agreed," Tucker said with feeling. "Except maybe Mr. Lancer, but his torture is more mental, like 'oh, dear God, keep my brain from dribbling into a puddle and evaporating into oblivion,' while Dash's is like 'oh, no, I don't want to meet yesterday's rotting lunch again!'

"I hear you." Tucker started fussing with his PDA again. "What are you doing?" Danny peered at it over his shoulder.

"Keeping a record of you powers. It'll be my job to keep track of your new abilities," he replied, holding up his PDA with a pleased smile.

"Okay?" Danny wasn't so sure of what to make of that.

"So far, the only thing we have is 'Transformation.'"

"Transformation?"

"Well what else would you call it? Changing? That just sounds dumb!"

"Metamorphosis!" Danny said in a spooky voice with a goofy grin, raising his arms.

Tucker rolled his eyes, but cracked a smile.

"No, but seriously, I would not call my ability to go ghost 'transformation.' I'd call it …"

"Dude, you just named it," Tucker said as he put the name in his PDA.

"I did?"

He held the PDA out for Danny to read.

"'Going ghost?'"

The new rings appeared and swept over him. His jeans and T-shirt turned into a black and white hazmat suit, his black hair turned white, and his ice blue eyes turned a neon, glowing green.

"So, ghost-Danny, does it meet with your approval?" Tucker joked with a mocking bow.

Danny grinned in response. Playing along, he crossed his arms and looked down his nose at Tucker with a snobby expression, eyes half closed. "It does indeed," he intoned. He frowned as he thought of something. "But…"

"Yes, O Great One?" Tucker deepened his bow, trying to hide the uplifting corners of his mouth.

"My name shall not be **Ghost-Danny**!

"Henceforth, I shall be known as **Danny Phantom**!"

Tucker dropped the act and looked at his friend who was standing like the Statue of Liberty. "Well that's not at all suspicious."

Danny just smiled at him and turned human as Tucker's mom announced that she was home and that they had better be doing homework.

**Short, I know, but it's been a really long and hard school week, and it's not over yet. Plus, I didn't want to drag it out or tack another idea onto the end. The next idea is for the next chapter.**

**With luck, (and little homework), I'll update soon!**


	9. The Basics

**I'm sorry! I just totally lost all ideas on how to make this chapter interesting, and I didn't want to make it bad! Plus I had (and still do) tons of homework. I probably won't update again until winter break (curse you English!).**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.**

**Chapter 9: The Basics**

"Shoot!" Danny exclaimed as the pencil fell out of his hand the fourth time in the past hour.

"Are you two kids okay down there?" Tucker's mom called. Danny's alarmed look vanished the moment it appeared, just like the rest of him.

"We're fine!" Tucker yelled back up hurriedly with a worried look at where he had seen Danny last. Danny was already reappearing, visibility slowly creeping up through his legs.

"I wasn't having problems like this yesterday!" Danny's absent head exclaimed.

Tucker set aside his homework and pulled out his PDA – again. "Difficult homework?" he asked sympathetically as he edited one of the lists on it.

"No! I was doing fine, but then the pencil just fell! Eek!" The pencil fell through his hand again.

"Stop it then!"

"I can't!" Danny began to panic, and felt himself sink into the floor. "Help!" he squeaked.

Tucker quickly bent down and pulled him back up. "You didn't feel anything? No frustration or anything else?"

"Nothing!" Danny's arms began to disappear as a cold feeling permeated through them.

"Didn't we just practice this?" Tucker asked dryly as he looked at his friend.

Danny growled in response and tried to do homework without being able to see his hand. He shuddered. Watching the pencil scratch black marks onto the paper without his hand to move it was disturbing. Tucker felt the same way.

"Well. Your list of powers currently adds up to three things: 'going ghost,'" – he used air quotes for effect, making Danny give him a shut-it look – "intangibility, and invisibility."

"You forgot one," Danny said, smirking as he scanned the list. "A major one."

Tucker paused. "Um…"

"Hello? Flying! That's another basic!" Danny had always wanted to be an astronaut, drawn by the idea of flying weightlessly. And now he could sort-of do it. "Maybe we should just call it floating."

"Floating," Tucker repeated as he put it in his list. "There, happy?"

"Very." Danny smiled again and returned to his homework, completely visible again. At least, until the second-to-last problem confused him and his whole arm went intangible, making him do an unintentional face plant on the desk. Tucker jumped, but laughed when he saw the position his friend was in.

"I give up," Danny sighed, trying to push his chair away from the desk and instead succeeding in pushing himself through the chair and falling on the ground with a surprised 'oof!'. "There is no way I can do homework when I can't even touch it!"

Tucker helped his glum friend up, not sure of what to say. _Sam would know how to cheer him up_, Tucker thought a bit guiltily, grinning at the image of exactly how she would do it. Well, she was a Goth after all.

"This isn't funny Tucker!" Danny nearly shouted from the floor. Tucker blinked and looked down to see only Danny's head sticking out of the floor the way it had in school. This time, however, he didn't scream.

He hurriedly rummaged around in his brain for a solution. "Can you float back up?"

Danny blinked and his mouth formed a small 'oh' in realization. After a moment, he rose back up to Tucker's eyelevel and abruptly dropped the inch or so to the floor when he regained tangibility.

"Dude, we seriously need to figure out how to control these."

"I know!" Danny agitatedly ran a hand through his hair. "Why did I have to push that button?"

"Well, curiosity killed the cat," Tucker's mouth said promptly.

"Meow," Danny replied dryly. "A bit literally here. Except I am not a cat."

"Why not? Your dog could chase you around the yard," Tucker joked.

Danny raised his eyebrows. "And I don't have a dog."

"But you want one! You've told me so many times." Tucker waved his arms emphatically, his PDA with the list of powers still in his hand. Danny's eyes fell on it.

"What makes you think I'm going to have more than the basics, anyway?" he asked. "I can barely control the ones I have; I don't need any more!" His left side flickered, proving his point.

Tucker just grinned widely. "It would be awesome if you did, though! Think about it!"

"I am thinking about it," Danny retorted. "More ghost powers is _not_ something I need. And besides, what kinds of powers would I possibly get?"

lineIdon'?Iputtheminandtheydon'tshowupwhenIdownloadthem

A few days later, Thursday to be exact, the boys were in Danny's room, hanging out. Sort of. Usually, hanging out wasn't so strenuous and they weren't so high strung, but the day's events had been particularly trying.

"_Danny," Tucker hissed in 2__nd__ period._

"_What?"_

_He pointed. "Your arm."_

_Danny looked at it for a moment before squeaking and hurriedly hiding the bluish, intangible appendage under his desk as Mr. Lancer continued to hand out the pop quiz._

_Tucker frowned. "That's the fifth time today you've done something like that."_

"_Like I said, it happens whenever I get surprised or upset or something. And a pop quiz is definitely something to be upset about! I've been trying to control it, but it's not working!"_

_Tucker tried to calm Danny down, knowing that his panic might make him go fully intangible and fall out of his seat the way he had in first period. It was amazing that no one had noticed anything out of the ordinary today; even Tucker had picked up on Danny's new abilities on the first school day and he was not known for his sharpness._

"_Alright. We're meeting after school to practice again," he said. "Your house?"_

"_Feel like letting me in on the conversation?" Sam asked two seats away, leaning towards them. The boys exchanged looks._

"_No, no! It's nothing!"_

"_Really! We're just talking about, uh … the new Doomed?" Danny asked more than said._

"_Clearly," she retorted with one eyebrow raised. "I know exactly what you were talking about." Danny began to sweat nervously. "You just can't believe that Mr. Lancer is handing out a pop quiz; you say it every time."_

"…"

_Sam sighed. "Did you even study?"_

"_No?"_

Yeah. Danny winced at the memory of the pop quiz. It really could have gone better. "So how are we going to practice?" he asked.

Tucker scanned the list. "The first power you have is 'going ghost' – I still think you could have done better, by the way –"

"Hey, don't insult my ideas; yours were even worse!" Danny said, floating up an inch or two as he sat up straight in indignation. Tucker looked at him pointedly and he gasped with surprise when he saw that he wasn't touching his bed.

"Anyway, as I was saying, your first ability is to go ghost." Danny ignored the face Tucker made at the term.

"I haven't been having any trouble with that, though," Danny protested. "It's the invisibility and the intangibility that get me." He rubbed his nose disgustedly, where he had hit it that morning when he fell over because his foot had gone intangible; he really hadn't been expecting the waffles that morning to roar at him, but that was what you got when you used devices that ran on ectoplasm, he supposed.

"But you had trouble in the beginning," Tucker pointed out. "This is to ensure that you have control and don't do it in school." Tucker shuddered at the idea while Danny turned completely invisible. Noticing Danny's apparent absence, Tucker tried to lighten the mood. "So go ghost, dude!" he said cheerfully.

"I still can't believe how cool you are with this," Danny mumbled as he reappeared. He thrust his arms straight up and declared, "Goin' Ghost!"

Tucker watched as his best friend was engulfed in a bright, bluish white light that blazed for a moment before settling into a ring around his waist. The ring split into two, which ran vertically over his body in opposite directions, leaving a black jumpsuit, green eyes, and white hair in Danny's place.

"Well let's get started," Danny sighed in his echoing voice as he began the standard procedure. Each day since Monday, they had gone to one of the boys' houses to practice and had created a familiar pattern. First, Danny would go ghost and then he would practice making himself invisible and intangible. The theory was that he would have better control if he could cause the changes instead of his emotions, but it didn't seem to be holding true. Danny, however, was desperate for any help, whether it worked or not.

He concentrated on going intangible and began to laugh at the tingling feeling that was going through his body.

"What are you laughing about?" Tucker wondered worriedly.

"It .. ha ha.. it .. tick-les!" Danny gasped, losing his hold on his intangible state and collapsing over onto the floor.

"What?" Tucker cautiously walked over and hesitantly helped him sit up; since the first experience, Tucker had kept contact with Danny in his ghost form at a minimum since his temperature was always a bone-chilling coldness. But Danny seemed as though he needed it right then.

"The wind!" Danny laughed, finally managing to calm down enough to describe what had happened. "I was intangible and the wind blew right through me." He blinked. "Whoa. I didn't know I was ticklish on the inside." His green eyes suddenly bore into Tucker's. "Don't tell Sam!"

"What, that you're ticklish on the inside?" Tucker asked with a raised eyebrow. "It's not like she'd get it."

"No, that I'm ticklish at all. I don't want to think about how she would use that against me."

"You got it, bro," Tucker nodded. After all, Danny was keeping some of his … characteristics … hidden from Sam as well. It was all for the best. At least until she found out. A sudden crash and keening cry made both boys' heads whip around. They shivered when they heard the screech that followed.

"What was that?" Tucker whispered to the empty air beside him. Although, to Danny's credit, his lower half had managed to stay visible.

"A ghost?" Danny whispered back, unsure. They screamed when a green blob erupted out of the center of the bedroom floor and hovered at eyelevel.

Actually, it wasn't really a blob. A red-eyed hawk the size of an office desk was glaring at them, its gaze locked on Tucker more than Danny, and Tucker was given a panoramic view of its vocal chords when it opened its beak and let loose another screech that blasted them into the wall.

"Ghost-bird!" Danny was up instantly, fully visible and tangible, settled in a slight crouch and looking almost as though he was going to fight. _But that couldn't be right_, Tucker thought. Danny didn't know how to fight; he got beaten up on a daily basis! The bird was going to pulverize him!

As for Danny, he was feeling an odd sense of déjà vu. Adrenaline coursed through him and he wondered when he had felt the odd emotion that ran with it, but before he could remember, the bird flew towards them at a speed that would put a racecar to shame.

Danny blocked it without thinking. His arms immediately moved up and blocked their faces from the tearing beak the size of a pencil sharpener. If anything, the bird's speed increased (somehow), and Danny was sent flying into the door. _That's not good_, he thought when he heard the sound of splintering wood. Rubbing his head, he turned his attention back to the unwanted guest in his room and immediately jumped into action.

"Run!" he shouted at Tucker, but Tucker only watched, paralyzed, as Danny tackled the bird, who effortlessly threw him away again and faced Tucker. Tucker stared into the purplish-glowing mouth and cringed, waiting for imminent pain.

Danny faced the bird and watched the scene unfold in slow motion. _It's too strong for me to beat it_, he thought. _I'll have to sneak up on it and surprise it._ Thinking quickly as the bird screamed again, which made Tucker's beret fly away from his head, he turned invisible and ran forward.

The hawk was very surprised when it felt something punch it at the base of one of its wings. And angry. The punch wasn't painful; in fact, it was pretty wimpy compared to some of the other hits it had taken, but no one, _no one_, was going to cause him pain and get away with it. The hawk turned away from the cowering Tucker and faced Danny to deal with this foolish pest.

_Crap_, was all Danny could think.

The hawk let out its loudest cry yet, and Danny went intangible just in time to prevent ramming into his wall beside the window. The hawk didn't bother going intangible, instead opting to rampage across the room and remove the furniture to reach its prey. It crashed through the glass window and rose up to meet the floating Phantom.

Tucker rushed to the window and stared at the fight between the two ghosts. The larger one was flying in a crazed jerky pattern, trying to follow the smaller one that was cutting smooth curves in the sky.

_How do I get rid of it?_ Danny wondered franticly while he flew as fast as he could to escape the sonic blasts that came from the bird's beak. He was much more agile than the other ghost, but he couldn't defeat it and he wasn't sure how long he could keep this speed up. This was more terrifying than his first ghost experience with the ectopus in the basement! He'd barely been able to throw it into the portal – right! The portal! Danny turned intangible and zoomed straight into the house, making a beeline towards the basement with the hawk close on his tail.

Tucker ran down the steps to see the first ghost pull up just before it would have flown into the glowing green opening of the portal. The hawk was not so lucky. Unable to pull up, it let out one last screech of outrage that shattered beakers and made the boys cover their ears in agony before the portal doors closed behind it.

Danny breathed hard, exhausted from the fight, and went over to Tucker. "Are you okay?" he asked as he inspected his friend for injuries. Noticing Tucker's wide eyes, he immediately became alarmed. "What's wrong?"

It took Tucker a few moments to register the question, but when he did, he licked his lips and, in a trembling voice, said quietly, "Your legs."

"So you're okay?" Danny asked in relief.

Tucker came out of his reverie with a start. "Dude, _I'm_ okay, but I'm not sure _you_ are."

"What? Why?"

Tucker looked up into Danny's face. "How can you not notice this?"

Danny bent down above Tucker and tried to soothe him. "There's no need to shout, Tucker-"

"DANNY!" Tucker exploded. "LOOK AT YOUR LEGS!"

Danny turned with a frown . "Yeah, what's wrong with my-"

Tucker covered his ears at Danny's scream and their positions switched. "Dude, calm down."

"Calm down? **Calm down!** **I don't have any legs!"** Danny was zipping around the lab, bouncing off its walls as Tucker tried to make him stay still. He wasn't having much luck.

"Look at this!" Danny shrieked, flipping onto his back so that he was flying backwards and pointing at the semi-transparent tail that was all that was underneath his suit's belt.

Tucker winced when Danny crashed into the wall and ran over as Danny fell down it and landed on the ground in a dazed heap. "Danny? Are you okay? Danny!"

With a groan, Danny stood up and rubbed his head. "Ugh, ouch!" Suddenly remembering his new lower half, Danny glanced down at two legs that were standing firmly on the ground. He observed them carefully for a moment before looking up at Tucker.

"So, I believe we can change 'floating' to 'flying' now," Tucker noted, making the change on his PDA.

"No kidding," Danny said, still massaging his head. His green eyes lit up happily and Tucker stared as their glow grew stronger. "That was awesome! Flying's better than I ever dreamed of!" He looked down again. "Excluding the tail part."

"What happened?" Tucker asked, puzzled.

Danny shrugged, and a blue light surrounded his shoulders, fizzing a little and spreading to the rest of his body, leaving Danny Fenton behind.

Tucker looked at him. "Ah, I didn't mean to do that," Danny said sheepishly. He yawned a little.

"So what happened?" Tucker pressed. Truth be told, he was a little glad to see Danny back in his human form again. He was sure he'd adjust eventually, but right then, it was still odd for him to associate his best friend since Kindergarten with a ghost that had entirely different coloring.

Danny shrugged again, stifling another yawn. "I don't know. One moment I had legs and the next, poof!, they were gone. I am very glad they're back," he added. "Solid legs are very important to me; they really help with standing." So saying, he went ghost again. Tucker gave him a questioning look and Danny smiled sleepily at him. "Flying is awesome, man. And I think I'll just fly myself to bed." With that, Danny flew through the kitchen and up to his room, which was conveniently directly above the lab, while Tucker took the land route. He found Danny floating beside his bed and yawning and stared at him again.

"Ah, Danny?"

"What?"

Tucker cleared his throat nervously. "It's back."

Danny looked down and instantly became alert again, although he didn't start flying around at top speed like last time. "AHH!" His tail suddenly turned to legs again as his body stiffened, but formed into a tail when he relaxed. "What is going on here?" Too tired to freak out again, Danny stayed relaxed and let the tail wave back and forth as he floated above his bed.

"Instincts again?" Tucker suggested.

"Mmm, maybe," Danny replied as he yawned yet again. Experimentally, he focused on the feeling of fighting and curled one of his hands into a fist. His legs reappeared. Then he thought of the other option, fleeing, flying as fast as possible, especially away from that hawk. His legs suddenly fused together and became boneless. Not as disturbed as he should have been, Danny sank a little lower over his bed. "But I currently couldn't care less." He reverted to human and landed softly on his bed.

Tucker took this as his cue to leave; Danny looked exhausted. "See you tomorrow."

"Bye, man," Danny said, already half asleep before Tucker had closed the door.

**Once again, SORRY! It's called HOMEWORK! And major projects.**

**Happy Holidays!**


	10. Basic Extensions

**I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY! Hopefully this chapter's length will make up for the long wait…**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.**

**Chapter 10: Basic Extensions**

Danny choked on his milk, eyes wide open in surprise. "You what?"

Tucker nudged him and discreetly glanced at his left leg, which became visible a second later under the cafeteria table. "You're getting better at that," he murmured to his half-ghost friend. Then the implications of what Sam had said sank in. "You WHAT?"

Sam settled down in her seat with her arms crossed. "Maybe it'll break that disgusting habit you have of eating only meat."

Tucker was absolutely speechless. "Don't you think this is a little extreme, Sam?" Danny asked quickly.

"Of course it is. You have to be, in order to make any kind of statement." Sam, if nothing else, was very good at making statements. "Anyway, I'm free during afternoons again. The past week of wearing down the school board is over now that they agreed to try a vegetarian menu."

The bell signaling the return to fourth period rang, making the trio get up and dump their trays (and in one's case, a brown paper bag) in the-

"Hey! Put that in the recyclables, Tucker!"

"But it's all the way over there," the technogeek whined.

"TUCKER!"

"Okay, okay! I'm going! Can you not see that I am walking over to the recyclable bin, holding the 'recyclables' over it, dropping them, and walking back?"

Sam's eyes narrowed at the exaggeration in Tucker's motions.

"Should I start running?" Tucker asked from the other side of Danny as he gauged Sam's expression.

"Fenton!" They turned around and saw Dash striding purposefully towards them with a murderous look on his face.

"I definitely should!" Danny booked it out of the cafeteria with Dash racing after him.

"I just got an E on my English paper! And I'm taking it out on your hide!"

_Drat_, Danny thought. Dash had the next lunch shift, so he wouldn't get in trouble for missing class while Danny would – once again – take the heat. He skidded around a corner and kept running, only looking back when he heard a huge crash.

He was too breathless to laugh at the sight of Dash entangled in an enormous pile of schoolbooks that obviously fell from the collapsed shelf that he had run into, unable to turn the corner as quickly as Danny had.

With a smile, Danny agilely leapt around another corner and ran even faster when he heard pounding footsteps behind him. He chanced looking behind him again before gasping with surprise; he hadn't thought he'd reached a staircase yet, but he kept running, stumbling a little before regaining his balance. A wall was quickly approaching and he almost turned left until he realized there was a wall there as well. The only opening was to the right, but that was where Dash was coming from. _What do I do?_ Danny panicked. He began running again, closing his eyes for a moment as he mindlessly tried to regain his breath and tripping yet again. He quickly picked himself back up, only to freeze as the sound of footsteps got even louder, but he couldn't see Dash anywhere.

"Come out, Fentina!" Dash roared as he charged down the hall. Huh. He could have sworn he'd seen Fenton run down this hall…

Danny looked up and promptly forgot how to prevent his powers from randomly showing up.

Dash was running on the ceiling! How was he doing that? Danny struggled to become visible again after Dash was out of sight, completely shocked.

More footsteps resounded through the hall, but once again, Danny couldn't see their owners. Unless…

"Danny?"

"Dude, you down here?"

Sam and Tucker came walking on the ceiling too! What on earth was going on?

Sam paced back and forth. "Danny!" she called.

Danny looked at one of the walls. _Where are the lockers?_ No, wait, there they were, they just weren't connected to the floor. That was stupid. Danny shook his head at the construction workers' obvious foolishness, but stopped when he realized his actual situation.

Sam and Tucker, who were still looking below him, weren't on the ceiling; he was! His hair was hanging away from his head and he felt a downward pull on his body, but his feet remained firmly on the big ceiling tiles and his arms hung loosely by his sides as though he was actually standing on the ground.

Sam turned when she thought she heard a cough, but no one was there. "Tucker?"

The boy glanced up. "Yeah?"

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" He blinked.

Danny stood over them, his hand firmly over his mouth as he considered his position. Sam couldn't know about where he was, so he had to somehow get down without her getting suspicious. Problem was, they were in a dead end. He'd have to walk a good distance to get out of sight. _Unless I become invisible._ But no, that wouldn't work; he couldn't become visible in front of Sam either. The best thing was to wait for them to leave. Or maybe…

Danny stayed behind Sam, but desperately waved at Tucker, trying to catch his attention silently. When Tucker didn't respond, Danny scowled. There was a reason Tucker had earned the title of "least observant teenager enrolled in Casper High." Why didn't anyone ever look up?

Probably because they didn't expect to see anything interesting happening on the ceiling, that's why.

Danny tried to grab Tucker's attention again and somehow get the message across to the socially-challenged techno-geek that he needed to lead Sam away, but it was in vain. Tucker was completely oblivious to Danny's efforts above them.

The late bell rang and Danny was almost pulling his hair out in frustration.

"See you after school?" Sam asked as she began to turn away, only to see Tucker staring wide-eyed at something above her. "What?" She followed his gaze, but didn't see anything.

"Ummm … nothing, just, I'll, uh, probably get detention. For being late. Again."

Sam snorted. "What else is new? So you'll tell Danny we're on for this afternoon, right?"

Tucker looked quickly up at Danny, who was making wide 'no' gestures above Sam's head. "Uhh, actually Danny and I had something already planned…"

Sam raised an eyebrow, silently demanding more information.

"See, we're doing a tournament tonight … in … Doomed! And, you know … guy stuff." Tucker was floundering.

"Guy stuff," Sam said flatly.

"Yeah! 'Cause girls don't play videogames, and that's what Danny and I'll be doing all afternoon!"

An unreadable expression entered Sam's face as she abruptly walked past him. "I'm going to class."

"Yeah, I'd better get there, too. Hopefully, Danny will already be there, heh…"

Sam was too irritated to notice the fact that Tucker hadn't taken a step away from his initial position as she stomped off to her advanced history class. Neither boy noticed the steam that was coming out of her ears or the furious, determined expression on her face.

**Linebreak**

"Dude, what the heck are you doing up there?" Tucker called up to his friend.

"I'm a little more concerned on HOW I got up here, Tucker," Danny informed him, annoyance clear in his tone.

"That was going to be my second question."

"Well thanks for asking. I think I just walked up here." Experimentally, Danny lifted a foot and took a step. With more confidence, he walked to the wall, but gulped when he got there.

"What are you doing?" Tucker asked impatiently. "We have to get to class."

"Have you ever tried to walk up a ninety-degree angle?" Danny stared at the obstacle apprehensively.

"It's just another one of your powers," Tucker encouraged him. "You've done pretty well controlling all the others you've come across." Danny still didn't move. "You just put your foot on it and then keep walking, right?"

"I guess," Danny whispered. Eyes tightly closed, he put his right foot on the wall, then his left. He opened them a crack, and grinned widely when he saw that he had successfully transferred planes. "Yes!" He jumped and let loose a small whoop of joy, elated at his success.

Tucker winced when Danny abruptly met the ground.

"Maybe I should have kept at least one foot on the wall," he groaned with his nose buried in the floor.

Tucker saw a few silhouettes moving towards the doors of the classrooms around them. "Either way," he said, grabbing Danny's arm, "we need to get to class. Like, right now."

Both boys ran to math class, barely making it out of sight before Mr. Lancer opened his door and looked around. "I could have sworn I heard someone out here," he muttered. Then again, maybe he had been reading too many mystery books lately…

**Linebreak**

"Come on, Danny," Tucker said, trying to cheer his friend up. "It wasn't that bad."

"Says the one who doesn't have to put up with the public humiliation," Danny grumbled. "I will never live this down." They had just finished a disastrous fourth period math class during which the teacher had told everyone to choose a spot on the chalkboard to solve the problem she had put up on the overhead.

_Danny tried to factor the problem to solve for x, but he wasn't having much luck. It would be quicker to use the quadratic formula which was…unmemorable. It had something to do with b and 4ac and he was pretty sure it had another a in it somewhere…_

_He banged his head on the chalkboard in frustration, not expecting it to go through the board instead. Everyone in the room turned when they heard Danny's strangled yelp and a huge crash._

_Even the teacher burst into laughter at the sight of Danny tangled in the overhead's wires that he had tripped over when he stumbled back. Markers were scattered across the floor around a giant Danny caterpillar with chalk-colored dust all over his hair._

Now, Danny was walking down the hall with yellow hair that shed every time he took a step. Nervously, he tried to dust it out with his hands.

"You're only making it worse," Tucker informed him as a smile tugged on the corners of his mouth.

Danny sighed and let his hands fall, abandoning his attempt to fix his hair. "I'll just use the showers in the boys' locker room." They walked into their next class – gym. Half the class was already out and doing the teacher's torturous stretching.

"Get changed, Fenton, Foley!" Mrs. Teslaff, the rather unfit fitness instructor, yelled at them. Meekly, the boys obeyed, meeting Sam on her way over.

"Whoa. What happened to you?" she asked Danny, glaring at his hair.

"Ummm…math?"

"FENTON! FOLEY!"

"Gotta go, bye!" Danny dragged Tucker to the locker room and hurriedly ran to one of the sinks. As Tucker fought with his locker, Danny splashed water into his hair and scrubbed it furiously, trying to get the yellow dust out, but when he looked up, he gasped.

Now, instead of a large yellow splotch on his hair, he had yellow streaks.

"Danny, we have to go out soon!" Tucker called to him as the last boys left the locker room. "Stupid locker!"

Well, at least the streaks looked more intentional. Danny jumped over a bench and ran over to his locker, barely keeping himself from ramming into it. Before Tucker had finished spinning his dial – again – Danny had his locker open and his gym outfit on. Teslaff's wrath was not something you wanted to fall on you.

"A little help?" Tucker panted as he vainly tried to open the locker. "It's jammed!"

Danny joined him and together, they pulled at the door. "How do you get it so tightly jammed?" With another groan, the locker door suddenly came free and the boys went flying back through the wall behind them that separated the boys' locker room from the girls' locker room.

"Wow. Pink," Tucker said as he blinked at the scene before him before realizing what had just happened. "Danny!"

Still intangible, they both looked up when they heard voices.

"Ugh, we're cheerleaders! We shouldn't have to do gym class with all those losers!"

"I know, right?"

Wordlessly, Danny flew back through the wall as fast as he could, pulling Tucker with him before losing his intangibility and tumbling to the floor.

"That was weird," Tucker stated as he stood up and brushed himself off. His hands were quivering a little. "But hey, at least now we know what the girls' locker room looks like."

Danny snorted absentmindedly as he observed his hands. How had he made Tucker intangible? "It didn't hurt, did it?"

Tucker paused as he remembered the feeling and shivered a little. "Not really. It was just cold. Seriously, that was the only thing it felt like, other than light and weightless."

Danny nodded. "I'll try to not do that anymore." His eyes widened. "Wait!"

"What?" Tucker frowned as he finished tying his shoes.

"I've never even done it before to begin with! I mean, I've turned myself intangible, but I've never turned something else intangible until now! This is bad."

"Dude! Calm down and just don't think about it," Tucker said, trying to soothe him.

"But what if I do it in front of everyone? What if I turn my desk intangible or my backpack or-"

"Danny. Like I said, don't think about it. And besides, you can probably control it the same way you control your own intangibility, right?" Tucker pushed open the door.

"Ri-"

"LATE! START RUNNING, BOYS!"

"What took so long?" Sam asked, coming up to jog beside them. "And Danny, what happened to your hair?" Her critical gaze took in the yellow-blondish highlights. "I didn't notice that you had dyed it this morning."

Danny gave a long-suffering sigh.

**Another Linebreak**

_It could have been worse._ Danny clung to that thought as he and Tucker walked to Tucker's house.

On the other hand, it could have been better.

"Okay," Tucker began as he fiddled with his PDA. "So I added 'walking on walls' to your list. I'm not sure about what to do with the intangibility, though. It would seem redundant."

"Let's just leave it at intangibility," Danny said. "Argh, I do not need this!" He suddenly started sinking into the pavement with a yelp. "Tucker!"

"Whoa! I got you, Danny!" Tucker pulled Danny up out of the ground and waited for the intangibility to pass.

Unfortunately, it didn't.

"Danny! Can't you stop it?" Tucker cried as he looked at his hands, which were beginning to turn bluish and intangible like Danny.

"I'm trying! Just let go!"

"What?" asked the now fully-intangible Tucker.

"Try it!"

Eyes closed, Tucker released Danny and immediately felt gravity again. "Phew," he breathed in relief before realizing that Danny was still intangible. "Well, at least you're not stuck in the pavement," Tucker offered.

Danny turned his grumpy expression on his friend while he floated a little above the sidewalk. Tucker swallowed when he saw the tail that had formed from Danny's intangible legs, even though Danny was still human.

"And nobody's here to see this."

"Tucker! Danny?" Danny abruptly disappeared as Sam came up. "Hey, Tucker. Where's Danny?"

"Uhhhhh…he…went ahead…and…yeah."

"Uh-huh." Sam crossed her arms skeptically.

"No, really!" Tucker said hurriedly. "He, uh, had to, uh, go to the bathroom really badly, so he ran to my house."

Sam raised an eyebrow._ I don't know what he's hiding, but I don't appreciate it._

Tucker felt a slight tug on his sleeve. "I'd better go. Don't want to miss that Doomed tournament!" he called over his shoulder as he jogged away, Danny flying invisibly a little above him. Sam watched Tucker for a moment until the boys turned a corner. Determined to learn what was going on, she stalked to her own house.

**Linebreak**

"Wow. That was close," Danny's disembodied voice said.

"And that is creepy. Can you turn visible again?" Tucker asked as he glanced around.

"Sorry." Danny reappeared – still intangible.

"And tangible?"

Danny frowned and closed his eyes for a moment before slowly regaining his usual coloring and dropping to the ground. Literally.

Tucker snickered as Danny peeled himself off the asphalt, earning a glare from Danny.

It was Danny's turn to snicker when they made it to Tucker's house. "What's with the sofa?"

Tucker stared at it for a moment before answering. "That is one big sofa."

"Hey kids!" Tucker's mom greeted them cheerfully. "We're just putting the new furniture in the basement. Remember, sweetie, we ordered it?"

"I thought it wasn't due for another week," Tucker replied as he exchanged glances with Danny.

"Early delivery," the woman grunted as she tried to push the sofa further into the house.

"Hey honey?" Tucker's dad poked his head around the house's corner. "I can't find it."

"Did you look-"

"Yes!"

With an exasperated sigh, his wife left the sofa and walked around the house to help her husband.

Danny and Tucker walked up to the full, red sofa that stuck halfway out the front door. The other half was inside. "So I'm guessing your parents didn't take into consideration how they would get the sofa inside the house when they ordered it?"

"Looks like it," Tucker agreed.

"Why don't we try?" Danny suggested.

"Be my guest."

"Together."

"You're the one with the ghost powers!"

"And it's your sofa!"

"Fine!" Tucker snapped. He walked around to the other side of the sofa and observed it for a moment. "How are we going to move it? It's really heavy."

Danny frowned. "Do you know how heavy?"

"Heavy."

"You just don't want to move it."

"Guilty."

"Can we at least try to push it?"

"…"

"Once?"

"…Okay. But I'm telling you it isn't going to move. We should leave it for my parents." With a sigh, Tucker rolled up his sleeves and joined Danny at the couch's end.

"On the count of three, okay? One, two, three!" The boys leaned all their weight into the couch, pushing and shoving as hard as they could.

It didn't budge.

Tucker leaned back and sighed, wiping his forehead. "Yep. Too heavy."

But Danny didn't seem to have heard him; he kept pushing rigidly on the sofa.

"Danny, we're too…" Tucker stopped talking when he saw Danny's eyes. Even though they were squeezed tightly shut, a glow seemed to emanate from them, and when they snapped open to focus clearly on the stubborn sofa, they were a swirling neon green.

The green from his phantom-form. Tucker quickly looked over his friend. _But he isn't in his ghost form; his hair is still black and he isn't wearing the hazmat suit or glowing._ The next thing, however, made Tucker quickly lose this train of thought.

His jaw dropped when he saw that slowly, but surely, the couch was moving forward, away from Danny.

Danny felt the sofa move and his confidence began to build, giving him the will to push harder. Panting, he went through the door one step at a time, unaware of anything else, until there was a bump signifying the sofa's meeting with the wall. Danny stood up and smiled at Tucker, who was still outside.

"See? Not so heavy."

Tucker looked at him dubiously for a moment. "Danny, you do realize you just moved a two-hundred pound couch."

Danny just laughed at him. "I could never move a two-hundred pound couch, Tucker."

"Oh?" Tucker's eyebrows went up his forehead. "How heavy do you think it was then?"

"Probably more like forty pounds."

"Forty," Tucker said flatly.

"Yeah."

"Danny, do you really think we would have had that much trouble moving it if it was forty? We were both pushing it at the beginning, and we couldn't move it at all."

"Ummm…" Danny didn't really have anything to say to that. "Maybe it was stuck?"

Tucker gave him a skeptical look as he looked for some evidence to support his theory. He thought back to what Danny had said a few days ago about ghosts. 'They all had the basics, but other common characteristics were extra strength and durability.' "Or maybe you have superstrength!"

"Superstrength? Oh, come on, Tucker, why would-oh." A look of realization spread across Danny's face. Hesitantly, he walked to the front of the couch and started pushing on it, trying to rotate it so that it could go down the steps.

They were very disappointed.

"Try it in your ghost form," Tucker suggested. "If ghosts are more durable and stronger than humans, then maybe it'll be stronger than your human one."

Danny shrugged. "I do usually have better control over my powers when I'm Phantom," he agreed. Checking to make sure no one else was around, he quickly stood up straight. "Goin' ghost!" The white ring appeared and split, running over Fenton and turning him into Phantom.

"Go, Danny!" Tucker cheered as Danny shoved at the couch. Inch by inch, it rotated until it was parallel to the stairs.

"Now to get it into the basement," Danny said, grinning.

"Tucker? Danny?"

Danny looked at Tucker when they heard his mom call, terrified.

"Turn back, quick!" Tucker whispered urgently. The rings appeared again and hurriedly made Fenton return.

"Oh, there you are!" Mrs. Foley gushed as she entered the house through her unblocked front door. "I made cookies this morning before the truck brought the-"

"I think she noticed the sofa," Tucker whispered to Danny, who nodded in agreement.

"What…how did…"

"Ummm…we're stronger than we look?" Danny asked nervously. He fidgeted under Mrs. Foley's stare.

"It doesn't matter how strong you are! You should have left it to us!" she exclaimed, worry coloring her tone. "What if you dropped it on yourself or pulled a muscle or-"

"We're fine, Mom," Tucker interrupted her.

Mrs. Foley took a deep breath. "Well, thank you for helping. But don't do that again! Leave the heavy stuff for Mr. Foley and I, am I clear?" she scolded.

Tucker and Danny nodded.

"Crystal," Danny said. Mrs. Foley could be scary when she got angry. In fact, now that he thought about it, practically all the females he knew were scary when they were angry.

"Good. Now, go have fun, and if you get hungry, Tucker knows where the cookies are. Mr. Foley and I are going to the hardware store to get a few pieces we need!"

They were heading downstairs before she had finished. "Okay, Mom!" Tucker called up over his shoulder. "So Danny," he said as they walked into the room, "how strong do you think you are now?"

Danny shrugged self-consciously and rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the coolness of invisibility begin to spread across his arm. He squashed it with a single thought. "I have no idea."

"Not strong enough," a voice hissed. Danny and Tucker jumped and skimmed the room, looking for the voice's source, but nobody was there. Danny shivered a little; it had to be a ghost, and he was not looking forward to meeting it. Especially since it seemed to know him.

"So, _newbie_." The voice spat the last word out with more venom than a rattlesnake. "I hear you've been protecting humans."

Danny and Tucker exchanged glances. "Excuse me?" Danny asked, puzzled.

They heard something rustle. "Don't play dumb with me, new ghost. I don't know how you can adopt a human form, but it doesn't fool me. You're the one who hurt my kin! And for that, _you WILL __**PAY**_!" The last word was a full-throated roar.

Tucker and Danny shrieked as a glowing green, red-eyed, ten-foot-tall rat appeared before them. Tucker almost fainted at the sight of its vast incisors as he stared down a ghost animal's throat large enough to swallow him whole for the second time that week.

Danny immediately went ghost the moment the ghost rat appeared. "Ewww," he moaned.

The rat paused. "What did you say?"

Danny gestured to the thick, gooey saliva that was all over the floor. "Do you have to slobber so much? Seriously, this basement was just cleaned!"

The rat growled and slunk towards them on all fours, red eyes narrowed. "I do _not_ slobber."

Tucker and Danny backed away. "Oh really? Then what do you call that?" Danny pointed at the viscous liquid that was dripping out of the rat's mouth.

"Danny! Don't provoke it!" Tucker hissed. _What a time to get a smart mouth!_

"VENOM!" the rat roared. "Subjects, attack!"

Danny gulped. _This just got a lot more dangerous._

"AHHH!" Tucker screeched as a horde of rats swarmed over him. He stumbled, trying to avoid the puddles of venom all over the floor.

"GET THEM OFF, GET THEM OFF, GET THEM OFF!" Danny screamed. He frantically tried to brush off the hundreds of rats that were running all over him, but no matter what he did, they kept coming back.

"Danny! Look out!" Tucker shouted.

Danny turned, and not a moment too soon. He barely managed to dodge the dripping jaws that snapped an inch away from his hair and instinctively went intangible.

"Oh," he muttered when all the rats that had been clinging to him fell off with nothing left to grab. He rolled out of the way of a swiping paw from the seismic rat.

"I am the King of the Rats! No one dares to hurt my realm, for fear of answering to ME!" With another earsplitting roar, it leapt on Danny and pinned him. "So, _new ghost_," it hissed. "Any last words?"

Danny wrestled with the Rat King, struggling to keep its heavily muscled arms from throttling him. "Yeah. My name isn't New Ghost; it's PHANTOM!" On the last word, Danny threw the giant rodent off him. "Tucker?"

"Danny!" Danny spotted his best friend under a heap of vermin, trying to fight them off. But every time he swatted at them, they turned intangible, leaving him with nothing to hit.

_And speaking of intangible…_ "Hold on, Tucker!" Danny yelled as he lifted up into the air again. He turned intangible just in time to prevent the Rat King from having part of him for dinner and flew into the fray, dodging as many of the foot-long rats as he could and shuddering at the feeling of going through the ones he missed. "Grab my hand!"

Without any hesitation, Tucker grabbed the bluish hand offered to him and felt the empty feeling of intangibility spread through him. He sighed with relief when the rats fell off him. "Go, go go!" Danny pulled him up and flew through the basement wall. They breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the open backyard, but it was short-lived.

"You can't escape from me!" the Rat King screamed at the new ghost that was flying away with the delicious human.

"You okay?" Danny asked as he turned himself and Tucker tangible again and set his friend on the ground.

"Besides a few scratches, I think I'm fine. I didn't get bitten," Tucker said, checking over himself. "You?"

"I'm fine," Danny assured him, still up in the air with his ghost tail, but he was too distracted for it to bother him. "But that rat won't be for long!" Before Tucker could say anything, Danny had zoomed off into the direction of the rampaging rodents. All he could do was watch as his best friend went up against a battalion of angry ghost critters. _I hope he's alright_, Tucker thought worriedly as he beheld the fight.

"Hey, fur-face!" Danny yelled. "Miss me?"

The Rat King growled.

"Knew it! You're speechless!"

The Rat King opened his mouth to scream his defiance at the smart-alecky young ghost, but before he could utter a sound, Danny punched him right on the nose.

"OOWWW!" The Rat King slammed into the basement wall.

"OOWWW!" Danny grabbed his hand and began hopping up and down on the ground, holding his hand. "Thick skull," he commented.

Tucker began running towards them, intent on helping Danny.

"THAT HURT!" the Rat King yelled as he sent a metal patio chair flying in Danny's direction.

Danny jumped out of the way. "Tucker, what are you doing?"

"Helping!" Tucker called back. "Or at least, trying to! How do we get rid of it?"

Danny continued dodging the Rat King's makeshift missiles and eventually the Rat King's own paws as he thought. _How do we get rid of it? The last few times, the Fenton Portal was close by, but it's too far now._ He jumped back to avoid the Rat King's sharp teeth and began to sweat nervously. _I may have to do this the old-fashioned way._

Tucker stood in awe as he saw his friend begin to fight back. The Rat King went flying back into his basement wall (which was holding up fairly well despite the many hits it was taking), a shocked expression on his face before a cruel smile took over it. "Well, newbie, you've asked for it now. Originally, I was just going to have you and your little human friend killed, but now, I think I will see to it that you are brought to my lair alive and personally gnawed on by yours truly." The smile became savage.

Tucker turned green at that image.

"Leave us alone!" Danny roared. His green eyes glowed even more brightly, and he nailed the smirking Rat King with a right hook so fast Tucker only saw a blur. The Rat King gasped as he found himself in the same position he had put the new ghost in not ten minutes ago.

Danny leaned in close as he pinned the larger ghost to the wall, his green eyes seething with fury. The Rat King struggled, his rippling muscles pushing and shoving, but Danny didn't budge. "Leave us alone," Danny continued quietly, but his voice was full of authority. "And don't come back." The Rat King gulped as he looked into those eyes and nodded so fast his nose was a blur.

"Well this is a fine mess," Tucker stated as he looked over the glowing green rats that were milling all over the basement and the patio.

Still holding onto the Rat King, Danny straightened up. "I'll get my parents. Come with me," he said firmly to the Rat King, and the two ghosts flew to the Fenton house. Cautiously, Danny turned intangible and flew to the basement with the Rat King, stopping only when they were right in front of the portal.

"Now get in."

With one last look into those eyes, the Rat King was gone.

Danny turned around quickly when he heard footsteps and turned human, landing a bit awkwardly on the floor in his hurry.

"Danny?" his mother asked, coming to a surprised stop. "What are you doing here? I didn't hear you come home."

"Mom!" Danny shouted. "Tucker's house is being invaded!"

"What?" Maddie Fenton immediately set her project down and became attentive.

"His house is infested with hundreds of ghost rats!"

"Did someone mention ghosts?" Jack Fenton came halfway down the stairs.

"Come on, Jack!" Mrs. Fenton cried, grabbing some weapons. "There's a ghost infestation at the Foleys!"

"Yes! I get to test out my new toys! I mean, we're on it!" They adults dashed up the stairs. "To the Fenton RV!"

Danny came up the steps more slowly.

"Danny," Jazz said. Danny turned to see his big sister standing at the bottom of the steps with her arms crossed and an 'I-am-not-amused' expression on her face. "Did you just tell them your friend's house is full of ghosts?"

"Yes?"

"DANNY! You know ghosts don't exist!" she exploded.

Danny shrank back a little. _This would be one of those 'angry females are scary' moments._ "I saw them!"

"What?"

"I saw them! They were everywhere!"

"You probably just thought they were ghosts," Jazz dismissed, waving a hand for emphasis. "I knew our parents' job was having a bad influence on your mind!"

"I'm fine, Jazz!" Danny took several more steps back from the future psychologist.

"How can you say that? Danny, you just said that you believe in ghosts!"

"And?" Danny challenged.

"What do you mean 'and?'" Jazz spluttered.

Danny sighed. "You know what? I'm going to go do homework," he informed her. "Tucker and I didn't really get to it. Speaking of which, I should probably call him and warn him about our parents," he continued thoughtfully as he walked upstairs. "He's never experienced their cleansing techniques before…"

He left a stupefied Jazz behind him.

**Linebreak**

Sam sat back in her chair as the sign announcing Chaos' victory over another player flashed on her computer screen. _Those boys!_ she fumed. Despite Tucker's words, they had not been on Doomed. It wasn't bad enough that they had claimed that as a girl, she was incompetent at wiggling her thumbs, no, they had completely lied to her!

They were hiding something. She didn't know what, but she didn't like it.

As Chaos, she took out another player in the computer game, lashing out with all her frustration and anger. Friar Tuck and Naut had been nowhere throughout the entire afternoon.

No, she didn't like it one bit. She didn't like being lied to, she didn't like being kept in the dark.

She didn't like it when her best friends hid things from her. Didn't they know they didn't need to hide from her? Sure, she could be violent and scary, but they were friends, and friends didn't keep secrets. Friends trusted each other.

And the fact that they didn't trust her hurt more deeply than any slap could.

_Tomorrow_, she vowed as she desperately searched the landscape for her friends, _tomorrow, I will find out what Danny and Tucker are hiding. Even if I have to personally walk to their houses and stand watch over them until they tell me_.

**On the thought of Sam's happy threat, Happy New Year!**


	11. The Weekend

**IMPORTANT! READ THIS! I am putting this story on hold until the end of May/beginning of June and will be working on my study-story, Unraveled (felt it was unfair to not tell you and make you go look for this info on my profile). But don't worry, this story will be completed somehow, and I really want to finish it before the next school year. However, it's the time to start studying for APs, and history is not my best subject.**

**Good luck in midterms to high school students and whatever tests college kids have! Middle schoolers, enjoy your childhood while it lasts…**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.**

**Chapter 11: The Weekend**

Sam's eyes snapped open when she felt sunlight reach her face and her mouth curled into a scowl.

"Good morning, Sammy-kins!" Mrs. Manson gushed. "Rise and shine!"

"It's bright and early, the best part of the day!" a cheerful Mr. Manson added unhelpfully.

Sam groaned in reply and rolled over under her dark covers, using them to block out the light. _Ugh. Morning people who can't live and let live_.

"Come on, Sammy!" her mother exclaimed in a preppy voice that made Sam want to smack her. It had been talking at her for fourteen years and Sam would be grateful when she didn't have to wake up to it anymore. "We're going shopping today and then we need to go see Dr. Deplominsky."

This made Sam groan even louder. Dr. Deplominsky was a nutrition expert, and her parents insisted on taking her to see him once every month; they were probably hoping that he would find something "wrong" with her and then they would accuse her ultra-recyclo-vegetarian habits and make her eat (here she shuddered) a cow.

"We have a lot to do today!" her mother beamed on. _You may_, Sam thought. _But I don't. I didn't plan anything yesterd-_ Sam sat bolt upright, a furious red hue coloring her cheeks when last afternoon/evenings' events caught up to her.

"I knew this would get you up!" Mrs. Manson exclaimed, holding up a flower, frilly pink dress. "Well, let's see you try it on! Hurry now!"

Sam fake-smiled at her. "Okay, mom, but out!"

Her mother hesitated. "Well…okay, Sammy." She let herself be pushed out the door to where her husband was waiting. "Call us when you're ready."

"I will!" Sam shut the door behind them and then glared daggers at her phone. "They had better be home," she muttered as she dialed Danny's number.

She waited…and waited…and waited…and no one answered. He was probably still sleeping. _Well, if I got up, he has to get up_. Sam dialed his home phone, preparing to ask one of the other Fentons, like Jazz, who was always up by seven, to get Danny.

_Hello. I'm sorry I, Jack Fenton can't come to the phone right now; I'm probably busy catching some slimy, filthy ghost!_

_JACK!_

_But anyway, just leave your name and number and some fudge, unless you're a ghost, then I'll rip you apart molecule by molecule!_

Sam practically punched the 'end' button.

"Sammy? Are you done yet?"

"Not yet!" she called back.

"You've never taken this long to put on a dress before!" her mother protested.

"I'm making sure my make-up matches!" she called back, hoping her mother wouldn't notice the pent-up anger in her voice. "I look downright awful right now!"

"You have half an hour," her mother said after a small pause. Sam smirked. She was probably thinking that she was changing her make-up at the moment. Oh no, it was the dress that would have to change…

But first she was going to call Tucker and get the story out of him. The phone rang once, twice, then suddenly the receiver sputtered and Sam heard of few crashes. She frowned. What was going on there?

"_I've got it!"_ Another crash. _"Darn, it's getting away! After it!"_ came the unmistakable voice of Mr. Fenton.

"_Jack, dear, I really think that we can let that one go and focus on the other TWO HUNDRED GHOST RATS SWARMING AROUND US!" _That had to be Mrs. Fenton.

There were a few more shrill screams, several more crashes, and many _"I'll tear you apart molecule by molecule, ghosts!"_ from Jack.

"TUCKER!" Sam roared down the line. Someone scrambled on the other end.

"Sam?" Tucker asked.

"Tucker, what's going on there?" Sam asked, her anger with him and Danny momentarily forgotten.

"Oh, hi Sam. My house is overrun with ghost-rats-"

"_GHOST!"_

"-and I took Danny up on his offer of getting his parents. That was a mistake. A really big mistake."

"Who just screeched?" Sam asked, her frown deepening.

There was a short pause. "That was my mom. Mr. Fenton just toppled over one of her vases and-**NO**!"

"You don't have to scream at me Tucker!" Sam snapped at him, before realizing it wasn't directed at her.

"_You can't have my PDA! Not my baby! __**NOOOOOOO**__!"_

"_It's ghost infested! See!"_

Something broke and Sam heard a wordless shriek.

She quickly ended that connection as well.

"Samantha? What was that noise?" her father asked from just outside her door.

"I tripped and hit my toe!" she shouted back at him. "But everything's okay! Just let me finish!"

"Okay, honey." He walked away again and the moment he was out of earshot, Sam covered her face with her dark, gothic pillow and screamed into it.

She couldn't talk to her friends right now.

Her friends were lying to her.

And her parents wanted her to wear frill pink monstrosities.

This called for extreme measures. Savoring every moment of it, Sam carefully took the eye-hurting hot pink dress with its disgusting ruffles and laid it on her floor, taking out the black spray-paint can she kept in her nightstand's drawer, and aimed.

**Linebreak**

Sam reveled in the scream her mother let out when she walked into the living room ten minutes later and the soundless gasps of her father as they took in her outfit.

The dress was almost completely pitch black. The ruffles had been cut off and there were dark purple spider patterns along their previous positions. The neckline had been changed from a collar to a sharp V, and the hem had been torn out so that the dress reached the floor.

"It turned out great, mom, thanks!" Sam said brightly. "I think I'll wear it for the next dinner social, I love it so much!"

Sam was sure that her mother was going to explode.

"SAMANTHA ANNABELLE MANSON YOU ARE GOING TO TAKE THAT RAG OFF RIGHT NOW AND I WILL PERSONALLY DRESS YOU INTO A MUCH MORE ACCEPTABLE OUTFIT! WE ARE GOING TO THE MALL TO REPLACE THE DRESS** YOU JUST RUINED!**"

"Ruined? No, I think it looks great," Sam said, observing herself critically. "I could do yours for you, too, if you want," she offered with a smile.

And that's how she found herself at the Amity Park Mall not thirty minutes later wearing a neat, frilly, preppy, boring pink dress.

**Linebreak**

Danny shivered underneath his covers; why did it have to be so cold in his room? He pulled the covers up and curled up under them, trying to make his feet warm again. It didn't do anything; in fact, he felt even colder than before.

Rolling over, he discovered that moving made it even worse because now he was in the cold_er_ part of the bed. He tossed and turned, but finally decided he wasn't going to get any sleep.

This decision was helped along by the sound of his parents battling a battalion of ghost-rats in the lab that was two levels beneath his bedroom. _Why didn't they soundproof it?_ he moaned mentally.

With a groan, he climbed out of his bed and pulled on his usual T-shirt and jeans, glancing at the clock.

_Ewww._ Eight. An awfully early time to wake up on the weekend. Ask any teenager.

Yawning, he stumbled out of his room and walked downstairs, consciously making an effort to stay tangible so he wouldn't trip, and rubbed his eyes as he pulled out his cereal.

"Hi, Mom. Hi Dad," he greeted the two ghost hunters.

His dad brightened immediately. "Danny-boy! Thanks for getting us yesterday! We finally have some ghosts to test!" And with that, he rushed back down the stairs with the crate full of snarling ghost-rats.

"Good morning, honey," his mom greeted him. "Sleep okay?"

Danny raised his eyebrows at her empty hands. "Is that all you caught?" he asked, nodding his head towards the basement where his dad was.

"These are devilishly tricky blighters!" his dad exclaimed. "But we caught them!"

Mrs. Fenton chose not to make a comment.

Danny's cell phone rang and Mrs. Fenton snickered quietly when he fell out of his chair. Actually, he fell _through_ his chair, but he wasn't going to tell her that as he scrambled back up, blushing.

"Hello?"

"_Danny! We have some things to talk about."_ Oh boy. Tucker did not sound happy.

"Where?"

"_Mall arcade?"_

"I'll be there. Give me twenty minutes."

"_Dude, you're still not up? You're parents left our house half an hour ago; didn't they wake you?"_

"Sort of. They just got here, and yes, I'm up. I've been up."

"_It's a miracle!"_

"Shut it," Danny said humorously. "See you there."

"_Yeah, bye."_

"I'm going to meet up with Tucker at the mall," Danny explained to his parents as he shoved his cereal down his throat.

"Okay. We'll be here for the rest of the day. Have fun, honey!" his mom called after him.

"And call us if you see any ghosts!" his dad added as he rooted around in the refrigerator and pulled out some fudge.

"Bye!" Danny hurried out, closing the door on the scene and shivering one last time before heading to the arcade.

**Linebreak**

"Way to tell me before, Danny!"

"Look, I'm sorry, dude, but I thought you knew!"

"Your parents totally wrecked the house! All I can say is that at least I'm not the one in trouble for doing it; I don't think my parents are going to let your dad within a ten foot radius of the yard anymore."

"At least it's not both my parents they're mad at," Danny reasoned. "Then they probably wouldn't let me within a ten foot radius either."

The duo had played at the arcade until they ran out of quarters (which took all of about an hour) and were now eating ice cream as they wandered around, just hanging out the way they had so many times before.

The only difference was that Tucker was harping at Danny about his parents' ghost hunting techniques, something they would never have even thought of before Danny's accident with the portal.

"You were more help than both of them put together, and you've only been doing this for a week!" Tucker continued ranting.

"Doing what?" Danny asked, confused.

"Ghost hunting!"

Danny choked. "What? I haven't!"

Tucker shot him a skeptical glance. "What do you call catching ghosts?"

"Something that I haven't been very successful at."

"Your parents were even less," Tucker told him as they walked into a bookstore. "Seriously, they were way better at house-demolishing."

"Look, I said I was sorry!" Danny protested.

"Sorry won't get my baby back!" Tucker yelled.

"Your what?"

"My PDA!"

Danny blinked. "You do realize you just called it your baby, right?"

Tucker ignored him. "Good thing I backed up all the info onto this one." Tucker pulled out a piece of technology from his pocket – another PDA.

"Then why are you so upset?" Danny wondered.

"Because your dad crushed it!"

"But you have another one!" Danny argued back as they turned into one of the aisles.

"It's not the same!" Tucker wailed.

"Why no-" Danny's thoughts came to an abrupt halt when he had to focus on keeping himself from turning invisible in surprise or intangible from the embarrassment (which would have been worse) of walking straight into a person as they turned around another corner.

A person wearing a pink dress. And a permanent scowl.

"Sam?" Tucker gasped.

The outrageously-dressed Goth grabbed her friends and towed them to the back of the book store.

"What's going on?" Danny asked as they were dragged unmercifully.

Wordlessly, Sam pointed towards the front windows.

"SAM!" Mrs. Manson called. She held up another pink dress, this time with more frills and ruffles than the one Sam was in now. "At least try it on! You might like it!"

Sam shuddered and the trio hid in the back around a shelf until her parents had walked past.

"What are you guys doing here?" Sam asked, more hostility leaking into her voice than she meant to show.

The boys exchanged glances. "Oh, just hangin'," Tucker said.

"Yep," Danny agreed. "Chilling." He suddenly shivered again as an actual chill swept through his body and his breath fogged up in front of him, showing up like a blue mist.

Sam turned back to him after checking to make sure her parents weren't coming back and put her hands on her hips, opening her mouth to say something when Tucker, who had seen the mist, quickly spoke before her.

"Sorry about this morning."

"What?" Sam asked, frowning in confusion.

"What?" Danny parroted.

"Sam called this morning," Tucker explained to Danny. "Anyway," he began as he turned to Sam. "That, if you couldn't guess, was Danny's parents turning my house into a dump heap."

"I said I was sorry!" Danny cried, giving another violent shiver. "What else do you want?"

"You said it was infested with ghost-rats?" Sam remembered, her eyes narrowing a little as she focused all her attention on Tucker.

"And get this," Tucker continued. "In the process, they only managed to catch a tenth of the actual ghosts that showed up."

Sam looked at him. "Ghosts?"

Tucker blinked. "Yeah. Why?"

"You believe in ghosts now?" Sam had a hard glint in her eyes. How far were they going to go with these lies? Sure, the Fentons had been in their house apparently exterminating ghosts, but they had a bad tendency of seeing ghosts everywhere, especially Mr. Fenton. Everyone who was sane knew ghosts didn't exist.

The blue mist appeared out of Danny's mouth again, but Sam was too mad to notice.

Tucker and Danny exchanged worried glances. "A horde of ghost rats with a giant king showed up at Tucker's house yesterday while we were there," Danny said. "We barely managed to escape and I called my parents."

Sam raised her eyebrows, her skepticism still in place. "And how did you escape?" she asked.

"Ummmm…uhhh…lots of running?" Danny suggested. It was true. It just wasn't the whole truth.

Sam allowed her usual Goth mask to fall in place, something she usually didn't do with her friends, but this was getting out of hand and she did not want them to see the pain their lies were causing her. "So you suddenly believe in ghosts and managed to outrun them?"

"Yes?" Danny more asked than said. He cringed as Sam took a deep breath, backing away as another chill racked his body – this one fiercer than before –

"RAAWWRRR!" Sam blinked. That couldn't have come out of her mouth.

"AAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEE!"

The people in the store screamed and ran for the exit while Danny and Tucker stared up at something behind Sam.

Sam turned around and found herself face-to-face with an octopus-like creature that had red eyes and a mouth. It was also floating.

"Run!" Danny shrieked, grabbing his friends and literally dragging them to the front of the store and into the milling crowd, not stopping until he had reached a fairly deserted hallway in one of the mall's corners. Sam gasped at his surprisingly powerful grip and the three stared behind them at the people running around while the ghost laughed high above them.

"What is that?" Sam breathed.

"A ghost," Danny replied almost immediately as they watched.

Sam walked in front of them, blocking their exit, and saw their eyes widen. The so-called ghost could wait. This needed to be resolved _now_.

"No more stalling," she said with her award-winning scowl. "Explain what's gotten into you two now."

"Gotten into us?" Danny laughed nervously, making her eyes narrow further, and he gulped.

"What's with the secrecy?" she demanded. "You guys weren't playing Doomed last afternoon."

Open mouths were her answer, crushing whatever hope she had that they hadn't been lying to her.

"What were you doing?" she nearly growled.

"The ghost-rats really did happen," Tucker said. "That was why we couldn't get on. Then Danny's parents came and-ugh." He shuddered. "Their purification techniques…don't ever ask."

"And what's your excuse?" she practically snarled at Danny.

He swallowed nervously. What to tell her… _what do I do?_ he thought desperately. He was an awful liar, he knew that, but he was not about to tell Sam the truth. What if she thought he was a freak? What if she broke their friendship? What was he going to say?

"Well…about a week ago, my parents finished the Fenton Ghost Portal," he said slowly. Tucker looked at him, surprised and a little alarmed, but Danny ignored him. "It's made me a nervous wreck. They took weeks to build it, and then it didn't work, but I fixed it, and-"

"You fixed it?" Sam asked, surprised.

Danny nodded and elaborated a little at the look she was giving him. "I hated seeing them so down like that, so I…uh…fixed it and now there are ghosts popping in and out of my basement all the time!" It was pretty good, he thought. It would hold. It was true.

Sam sighed and dropped her arms. "And why didn't you tell me about this?"

The two boys exchanged glances again. "Ummm…because?" Danny asked.

Tucker sighed. "Sam, it's just weird. You weren't with us when most of the ghost action was happening, and we knew you'd be skeptical about the ghosts, so…yeah."

_I definitely owe him one_, Danny thought while shooting a grateful glance at Tucker.

"I believe you," Sam reassured them. Danny raised an eyebrow and Sam colored. "Alright, yes, after seeing the ghost, but I was willing to give it a try and be proven wrong before. Because that's what friends do. They tell each other things and they support each other. They trust each other." She watched carefully for any effects from her last sentence.

Both boys fidgeted under her stare. _I can't trust you with this_, Danny thought. _Don't make me, please don't make me!_

He suddenly shivered again, and this time, Sam noticed. "Are you okay?" she asked, worry coloring her tones.

"What? No, I'm fine, I just need to get a … sweater or something." He shivered again.

"I'll get you home," Tucker offered. "Good luck dealing with your parents," he told Sam as they walked away.

"Thanks," Sam said, her mask softening a bit. So they hadn't really been hiding something; they just hadn't gotten around to telling her about what was going on, and she had to admit that since she had been devoting all her time to convincing the cafeteria to modify their menu for a short while, it had been hard for anyone to talk to her really. She was just glad she hadn't missed out on anything serious.

**Linebreak**

Danny shivered again. "You okay, man?" Tucker asked when they had rounded a corner away from Sam.

"I've been shivering like this all day," Danny stuttered. "I don't know why, either."

"Maybe-" Tucker's suggestion was cut off when a voice suddenly shouted, "BEWARE! FOR I AM THE BOX GHOST!"

Danny smacked his face while Tucker stared at where they had come from; where the voice was coming from right now.

"Cover me," Danny hissed as he dashed behind a pillar and checked to make sure no one could see him. "I'm goin' ghost!" he cried, immediately feeling the rings form around him and turn him into his Phantom form. He walked back out and grabbed Tucker, who shivered at his icy touch, but didn't flinch away from it. "Sam's back there!"

**Linebreak**

Sam, unlike most people, didn't scream at the sight of the blue, over-all wearing man floating in front of her.

Correction: _ghost_ floating in front of her.

He just didn't seem scary, not after all the horror books she had read and movies she had seen.

Now, when the boxes around her suddenly levitated, that was a whole different story. It suddenly occurred to her that maybe you couldn't judge a ghost's harm ability by their looks. Not that she usually based assumptions off of looks, but there was a good chance that if you saw someone with a fat, short, stubby figure and someone with a lean, slender one plus combat boots and fighting knowledge, the second guy would be able to easily walk away from the first one. You wouldn't exactly expect the first guy to levitate a bunch of boxes and throw them at you with his mind.

Sam tried to dodge the boxes, already knowing there was no chance, but before she could move, she felt something frigid touch her shoulder and then a tingly, empty feeling spread through her. Right before she watched a box fly through her blue shape.

With a startled cry, she jerked away from the touch and looked up into the glowing green eyes of a floating teenager with snow-white hair.

"Watch out!" he cried, and immediately grabbed her and flew up above the boxes before setting her down next to someone else – Tucker – and flying back towards the boxes.

Sam looked around, hardly taking notice of the ghosts anymore, just searching. "Where's Danny?" she shouted to Tucker.

_Shoot. What do I tell her?_ Tucker panicked. On impulse, he shrugged at her.

Big mistake.

"I thought you were taking him home!" she screamed at him.

"I-ah-um…" Tucker trailed off miserably before turning to the fight.

Sam followed his gaze and her eyes became glued to the scene.

The teenage ghost was mostly trying to dodge the boxes, doing his best to fly towards the box-controlling ghost, as it yelled a rather pathetic speech at its opponent.

"I AM THE BOX GHOST! FEAR ME AND MY CARDBOARD VENGEANCE OF DOOM AND DESTRUCTION! I WILL TAKE OVER THE WORLD AND NO ONE WILL STOP ME!" Insert not-very-good evil laugh.

Sam gasped as a box flew right at the teenager, about to hit him in the stomach, when suddenly, a hole opened up inside him and the box flew through it. The teenager froze, but Sam couldn't see his face anymore; he was floating between her and Tucker and the cough*Box Ghost*cough.

Another box went flying towards him, but this time the teenager was quick enough to dodge it – in an unnatural way in which his body became a boneless curve, his legs melding into a black, semi-translucent tail.

"Stop it!" the teenager yelled at the Box Ghost as he dodged a torrent of boxes, twisting into the strangest shapes imaginable. Danny gasped with surprise when his top half separated from his lower and allowed five boxes to charge through before reconnecting. This was _creepy._ Melting into a formless blob? Disturbing in every way, shape, and form, especially for the person feeling himself turn into a puddle.

"FEAR ME AND TREMBLE!" it shouted back. "FOR NO ONE CAN HOPE TO DEFEAT ME, THE BOX GHOST! I WILL NEVER STOP! NEVER!" And with one last well-aimed box and a final attempt to laugh, the ghost disappeared.

Danny, despite his excellent dodgeball skills, got nailed in the head with the box as he tried to fly around it and fell none too gently onto the concrete below him, deaf to Sam and Tucker's gasps. Panting, he dizzily struggled to his hands and knees, trying to focus on making his head stop spinning, unaware that a bright ring of light was forming around his middle. As the rings made him human again, Danny stood up and clutched his head before finally turning to face his two friends, his eyes widening as he realized what he had just done.

For about ten minutes, nobody moved. Unfortunately, it couldn't last any longer.

Sam walked up to him and, planting herself firmly and directly in front of him, looked Danny right in the eye. And before he could so much as blink, her hand whipped out and gave him a nice pink mark on the cheek.

He stared at her in disbelief as she stomped away, her back straight and her combat boots making solid thuds on the ground, the epitome of fuming female fury. Slowly, Danny's gaze met Tucker's just as astonished one.

That was unexpected.

**Linebreak**

Danny played with his food at the dinner table, not really in the mood to eat, not after what had happened that afternoon. He didn't understand it. Sam hadn't said a word, just slapped him and walked off. He had expected to be chewed out, screamed at, punched once or twice, maybe even kicked. But Sam had just given him barely a bruise and left.

_She doesn't want anything to do with me,_ he realized. He blinked back some tears. _She doesn't accept me. Stupid, Fenton! You just had to be careless, and it lost you one of your best friends!_

"Danny?" Jazz peered at her little brother worriedly. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," he answered shortly. "Just not hungry."

"Well in that case," their dad began, his eyes lighting up, "I can show you my new invention!"

Danny barely paid any heed to his words, to miserable to even be alarmed. Jazz just rolled her eyes. "A soup thermos?"

That made Danny look up and, low and behold, his dad had whipped out a silvery-white thermos with green accents and a few buttons.

"A Fenton Thermos!" Jack announced proudly, waving it around. "It's supposed to trap ghosts!" His expression turned crestfallen. "But, since it doesn't work yet, it's just a thermos." He brightened up immediately. "A thermos with the word 'Fenton' on it!"

Jazz face-palmed. "Dad," she said slowly, as if she were talking to a slow child. "There. Are. No. Such. Things. As. Ghosts!"

"Of course there are, Jazzy-pants!" Jack exclaimed happily, and proceeded to blather on about ghosts while his wife nodded, smiling, and his daughter argued with him heatedly.

Danny put his head on the table. It was going to be a long, miserable night.

**I promise I will post again by June!**

'**Til then**


End file.
